I moved to the U.S. last year, then the pandemic struck

When I was a young girl growing up in the Philippines in the 1980s, I was convinced that I knew America by its smell. In my mind, America smelled of a freshly, and hastily, opened care package filled with cans of Spam, Libby’s sausage and Target corned beef.It was the smell of clothes sent by relatives in California, including a light blue T-shirt emblazoned with Captain America’s shield.

My sense of America’s greatness predated my awareness of its vast geographic expanse, its economic and military might. Everyone in our small town assumed it, too. After all, America’s influence was everywhere, in print and on radio and television.

Part of me was already American — my maternal great-grandfather, I was told, was a U.S. soldier from Texas. I apparently inherited my somewhat fair complexion from him. But the American connection that loomed largest in our family was my paternal grandfather, who had fought alongside U.S. troops in Korea and returned to the Philippines a battle-scarred war veteran. Although he died before I was born, his legend was central to my family’s story. I could see and touch evidence of it — the American flag that once covered his coffin.

By the time I first stepped on American soil, I had already traveled to other countries and settled down in Singapore. At the San Francisco airport, my California relatives and I greeted one another in our dialect. America didn’t feel too foreign on that vacation, or on visits to see a Filipino friend in New York City. But brief stops on the West Coast or East Coast, and seeing familiar faces, don’t really introduce you to

America.

A little more than a year ago, my husband’s job brought us to the United States, not as tourists but as immigrants. We would live in Atlanta, with no family or close friends, not even a branch of the beloved Filipino fast-food chain Jollibee, which we had found in San Francisco and New York.

Now, I sensed, I was really in America, really in the foreign country I nonetheless thought I knew. It’s going to be OK, I thought. I’ll volunteer at the neighborhood association. I’ll be an active parent in my daughter’s school. I’ll join a writers club. I’ll find my circle.

But before I could settle in, the pandemic struck.

The neighborhood association canceled our photography project. At school, after a dinner event for seventhgraders, subsequent meetings were postponed or canceled. Cafes and bookstores closed. Now, isolation was piled on displacement. I grew anxious.

With the spring, the news cycle began to spin faster. Deaths linked to COVID-19 mounted, then came new names: Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky. George Floyd in Minneapolis. Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta. Nationwide protests and violence. And the pandemic’s awful toll continued.

I escaped on trips to the Blue Ridge Mountains, taking solace in nature. In the fall, we drove to Boston. I hiked to Henry David Thoreau’s cabin site at Walden Pond, and I imagined Louisa May Alcott at the Orchard House. Thinking about history was a comfort when life seemed a nonstop cacophony of angry political accusations and terrifying coronavirus alerts.

In early November, I watched and waited as news channels called the elections in many states. In my home state, the wait stretched into weeks. I thought about when I had stood in line outside a cafe behind a man whose shirt proclaimed his devotion to the Second Amendment. Suddenly, November and again in January, Georgia was on everyone’s mind.

I went to the post office recently, and, while waiting my turn, I inhaled a distinct whiff reminiscent of the packages from my childhood. Maybe it was the smell of cardboard or packing tape in a stuffy room. I recalled my childhood impression of America’s greatness — did that still hold, even though the nation’s handling of the pandemic wasn’t exactly best in class?

As I search for answers, I remember California before the fires, New York before COVID-19, the Blue Ridge Mountains in summer and New England in fall. In Atlanta, I savor my walks, when I invariably meet a neighbor out with a dog. I smile when I reach the little free library and see that a book I dropped off has been taken. On trips to the grocery store, I notice the Goodwill collection center nearby, and recall that the United States is reliably rated the most generous country in the world.

Looking around my neighborhood, I note that one thing has remained unchanged since the day we arrived: Even though the country has endured a terrible year, the American flag continues to flutter on many porches. I’m reminded of the folded flag that my family had carefully kept in my grandfather’s military footlocker, and I know that his sacrifice for America was worth it.