Empires rise. Empires fall.

Is the melting pot boiling over?

There are moments you don’t understand until years later.

They sit quietly in your memory. Unresolved. Unexplained.

Then one day you watch history beginning to rhyme, and suddenly a moment you had filed away as “strange” reveals itself as something much bigger.

Years ago, after visiting my late husband’s family in Trinidad, the four of us—Daniel, our two children, and I—returned to the United States. We made our way through immigration like every other family returning home.

Then, without explanation, I was pulled aside.