We had a dream

We are sitting together on hard wooden benches in Faneuil Hall, waiting for the judge. We are dressed up, expectant, smiling.

Little US flags poke out from shirt pockets and purses. An hour passes. The benches get harder.

We have waited years, even decades, for this day. We can wait a little longer.

We are waving to girlfriends and husbands and children in the balcony, holding up thumbs and flags as they snap pictures.

We are making friends, leaning in to chat or help make sense of the officials' instructions, straining to understand one another's thick accents.

We are doctors, clerks, students, factory workers. We live in Hyde Park, Randolph, Lowell, Chicopee. We are from Angola, Poland, El Salvador, South Korea.

There are 417 of us in all, from 75 countries.

We are Jennifer Marchan, who left Guyana 28 years ago and gradually realized she was never going back.

We are Ming Shu Zhan, 79, a doctor whose wife brought him to Boston from Beijing, who is thrilled to be here because "America is free! It's free!"

We are Pok Sum, who fled through the Cambodian jungle into a Thai refugee camp to escape the Khmer Rouge as a boy, and cannot talk about what he saw.

We are Army Sergeant Jose Castillo, a Dominican who spent a year in Iraq fighting for a country that was not yet his.

We are Lisa Madison, from Nigeria, who holds a red, white, and blue corsage, and whose mother had a vision 30 years ago that she should stay in the United States.

We are the elderly man in the white hat and the too-big gray suit, who spent nine years in Vietnamese prisons after the fall of Saigon, and won't give his name in case the government there finds out he spoke badly of them.

Today's naturalization ceremony will be life-changing for all of us.

The road to this day has been so long and, for many, so complex and nerve-racking, that it is easy to lose sight of the welcome that is one of this nation's enduring qualities: A million people will be sworn in as US citizens this year.

With citizenship, many of us will travel from the margins to the mainstream. We will no longer need permission to leave here, or to stay. Our lives will have a new permanence. We will get to help decide who makes the rules.

Even before the swearing-in, the transformation begins.

US District Judge William Young stands beneath the giant painting of Daniel Webster defending the Union, and tells us we are special.

"It's my privilege to welcome you to citizenship," the judge says, and we hoot and holler. "You, make no mistake, are what makes this country great."

And then, "This is a short ceremony, but you have walked long roads to get here. I want to thank you . . . on behalf of all citizens."

Ask us how we feel on this day and many of us will say we are the ones who are grateful, for the immense opportunities this country has given us, for the rights and responsibilities that will be ours.

But here is a federal judge in his black robes thanking us.

We entered Faneuil Hall proud to become US citizens at last. Young makes us proud to be immigrants, too.

When it comes time to take our oath of citizenship, the sea of raised right hands - high and low, smooth and lined, black and white - is a beautiful sight.

Together, we renounce all other allegiances, swear we will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and promise to bear true faith to its principles.

When we are done, we let out a thunderous cheer.

Our hands come down, and all of the little flags go up.

Yvonne Abraham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at abraham@globe.com.