A few years ago, shortly after my daughter and I moved into a new apartment in Los Angeles, a neighbor helped me with a heavy box.

Once we’d struggled it through the door, I thanked him and said, “My name’s Jennifer and this is my daughter Jessica.”

And he said, “Nice to meet you. My American name is Leslie.”

I’ve thought about those five words a lot over the years, about how much weight they carried, and I marvel at all of the backstory packed into them: observations and assumptions about me, decisions about social interactions, experiences of being an immigrant.

My understanding of what that sentence means grows more and more layered as I have more life experiences but that knowledge is always tinged with the regret that I never got to know this neighbor well enough to learn his real name.