There's no grandeur to the tidy, unremarkable Windsor Ridge Apartments, where I lived a few years ago before buying my first house. No Statue of Liberty, surely, just a dreary water tower stating "Westborough", surrounded by ghostly corporate parks.

But drive in Windsor Ridge and you'll meet the Americans-in-training, at what I believe is the single most diverse place I've ever lived, including my tiny apartment in the East Village.

Linda Keenan worked 7 years as a head writer/senior producer for various programs on CNN...read more

There's no denying that, as renters, we were second-class suburbanites. But when it came to work-ethic and intellect, I got the feeling that the recent immigrants who surrounded us were generally first-class.

Two images stand out. One was the Muslim mom in the pool, fully covered in a snappy but sufficiently modest "burquini". We talked swimmy diapers.The other was the South Asian neighbors using cricket bats to shovel this mysterious nuisance: snow. They gravitated to the nearest white guy, my husband Steve, who clearly knew his way around an actual shovel.

We, the "whiteys," as Steve and I derisively called ourselves, were the minorities at Windsor Ridge. This was a waystation for immigrants, many working in the tech business, hardly poor (the rent isn't chump change) but aiming for better. It was through their incredibly resilient kids that I got an education in what it takes to become an American.

There was Pooja, eagerly awaiting her first snow. You'd never guess that this self-possessed tween had just left Singapore months earlier. She was jealous that her sister, a freshman at Northwestern, had seen her first snow before she did. I said: "Northwestern? Great school." Pooja said, "Well, my sister was disappointed about going there."

I immediately thanked the heavens that my own 3-year-old, Frank, wouldn't have to compete against Pooja, a decade older, in, say, the Westborough Spelling Bee.

There was 5-year-old Leo, who was Chinese, and spoke no English when he appeared next door, looking emotionless and lost. Frank and I would watch him get on the school bus; tiny Leo, watched over by an 8 year old Chinese mother-hen named Hope, who knew the language and the ropes. By year's end, Leo was smiling, saying hello to us, rapping on the back door to play, and speaking better English than his mom

And Bill, the 6 (maybe 7? we would never know) year old boy I would miss most when we left. I don't know about snow, but clearly he had never seen a blond head before, namely, my son's.

Bill would always rub Frank's head and laugh uproariously. He spoke no English but would pop over and play for hours. I realized that back in India it was expected that kids make their own fun, without rigorously scheduled playdates or karate class. And Bill was a master. We began to figure out that he went door to door, no matter the language, in search of playmates.

For Frank's birthday party, we had an Indian friend write Bill's invitation in Hindi, and he showed up, alone, all dressed up, with a high-wattage grin. I had bought him Indian sweets which he literally spit out. Clearly I had no idea where he was actually from in South Asia.

The kids, and their parents, showed me how much tougher and more upstanding these Americans-to-be were than many of us "whiteys". If there was a fancy car in the lot, it wasn't theirs. If there was a flat screen TV delivered, it was invariably the white folks getting it. The biggest thing the immigrants seemed to buy were rice bags. When there was a nasty domestic dispute, Steve and I both said, simultaneously, "it's got to be a 'whitey'." Guess what? It was.

Now I live in a town where diversity amounts to whether mom or dad is a CEO, a CFO, or a CTO. I miss the colors and customs of Windsor Ridge, and I have my own American fantasy for Bill.

I meet him with Frank a decade from now in Cambridge, speaking flawless English. He tells me he remembers his first American birthday party, with the piñata and the mystery Indian sweets. We'd laugh and I'd say, "What are you doing now, Bill?" And he'd say, offhandedly, "Oh, I go to MIT". The first part of my fantasy, I know, will never happen. The MIT part? I'd bet my passport on it. ...read more blogs