No Island is an Island: Chapter 6: Go Team Cuba.

Being my crazy American self, I let a few tears go and don't fight them back. Being here in Cuba is a Big Deal. Tiafi and Abuela and Miriam left here but never got to come back.

One hundred times Abuela told me "I want you should see Cienfuegos" and nod her head firmly until I understood I wouldn't really know her until I saw where she came from. I could never promise her this, I couldn't bear making such a promise and having to uphold it.

But here I am, in one of the places she lived and my crying stops as I'm absorbed into the details of the architecture the molding the doors that horses could walk through the floors the doors the long hallway.

 I follow the sun down the hall and pass one enclosed patio and keep walking to the back of the house where Olgita is starting lunch in the makeshift kitchen. I've already discovered there isn't running water; I'm not sure how she cooks and I don't want to ask. She explains something anyway, pointing at a hot plate and saying something about my Mom, then showing me the dark empty pantry.

 No triscuits, no boxes of happy cereals, no cans of food-o-olios or boxes of saltines or spray cheese.

She keeps talking about something but she's going fast and my mind can't keep up and she's explaining in great detail something about the wall in front of us that makes no sense at all to me so I slip away gently and find my Mom. I feel like a child dashing back to hide under her Mom's skirts, only I'm hiding behind her Spanish.

Excuse me, Mom? I think Olgita just told me she painted the whole wall black back there but it isn't black, it's yellow and I think I lost something big in the story.

Mom tells me there had been a fire many years ago and Olgita made due with shortages and some how restored it all. From what I could see, Olgita would win a DIY championship in the US, if we ever have one. Go Team Cuba.

I stay in the office room where Tia Lourdes receives guests. The two doctors were still there and their almost 16 year old daughter got up to give me a chair.  She comes back minutes later with a tiny dark cup of Cuban coffee.  I take some happily and in one sip see it is bitter and that is odd in this land of sugar.  There are several packs of Splenda in my purse but I don't reach for them and bear the hardship.

The first doctor, the gentleman, asks about me and I tell him I teach American History and Foreign Policy and Social History.

He nods with a graveness and asks permission to ask a question. Of course.

So he asks, "What do you do with all the nationalities?"

I answer thoughtfully, sentence by sentence, pausing so my mom can translate.  "The US has always been a country of immigrants from all over.  I have immigrants from all over the world in my classes at school." 

He nods, I continue, "Most immigrants go where they already know someone and they learn about the US and learn English and become American that way. There are communities of Cubans in Miami and Puerto Ricans in Orlando and..." I keep going on for a few more examples and gauge his response, trying to figure out what his real question is.

"So people don't have to let go of their culture and their family to become American."

His face lights up, he nods, then ask, "How, then, do you know that you're American?"

My Mom translates this with her eyebrows up, wondering, too what I'll say.

I shrug, "I guess you're as American as you want to be. Right now, coming here to Cuba, I've never felt more American in my whole life."

A few minutes later, as garlic smells filled the room from the kitchen the doctors and their daughter excused themselves to let us have a family meal.

Like a play of carefully coordinated exits and entrances, Olgita's father enters at exactly this time.

 Mom recognizes him. He was the trusted family companion who walked her down the street to and from school among other trusted errands.  He is stiff and silent and my Mom hugs him and I take his picture.

I didn't catch his name but heard they call him "Cuco" which is also my grandfather's nickname.  I wonder, again, if we are family but no one offers any explanations and I don't ask.

Too quickly a horn honks for him, it is his ride, they take him off to where he was going.

Time for lunch. It was the four of us - Tia Lourdes, Olgita, Mom, myself.

The table was set with bowls of food -- yellow rice, fried potatoes, sliced tomatoes, chicken, bananas from the tree in the backyard.  Each cup of water was covered by a plastic lid that seemed to be rescued from a Pringle's can.  I hesitate before drinking the water but I go for it anyway.

Tia Lourdes sat next to me and drank a bowl of soup.

I filled my plate and ate as much as I could, too sober and emotional to taste anything or even try to lose myself in these non-Chikfila fried potatoes.

When the pause comes I ask Mom to ask Tia Lourdes something I really need to know. 

She translates with her face flat, not judging me (thank you) and asks Tia Lourdes, "Melissa wants to know if you saw the food fight at Miriam's funeral."

Permelia Pentacost and the Other Boleyn Sister

As summer winds down I face what I need to face, taking care of tasks big and small. This is 'something" to do, but it isn't everything, it isn't nearly enough, I need more, I have to be engaged, I have to have something to think about.

That's why I love ancestry.com.

 Just a few hints give me the names and more hints and minutes later I'm knee deep in a boom of relatives on my father's side who settled along the German Coast Louisiana in the early 1600.

Because this is NOT a video game I don't have to plant crops or build hospitals for them.

That would be cool, but this is easier. No surprise hurricanes will come through; in fact as I go through who arrives where, who the meet and marry, and how long families stay put, I can see the forces pushing and pulling them from Europe to America and then to smaller communties within it.

 Through a twisted hint from the back of a century old family photo I find the curious name Permelia Pentacost.  I wonder if the father was a revivalist preacher, if he changed his name to escape something.

Later (hours? days? have I slept?) I find a wife who has 5 children in Tennessee and then left them all behind -- or maybe she brought a daughter? but not her husband because  she was married at Nauvoo right on the evening of the famous Mormon slaughter, survived the slaughter and was buried in Utah thirty years later.


Every bit of this research is delicious, it tastes so good I have to shout out to my kids.

Zoe! Another ancestor who fought in the Civil War! This one on the.... Union.  Don't forget last night the one we found who fought for Alabama. We definitely fought on both sides, but we have to see if our ancestors fought each other.

She waves a feeble "thanks" at me and leaves me to my work.  As a history professor, researching history is work. It absolutely has to be, it has to count, so yes. Mommy is working on her iPad - iPhone - Mac (all three at the same time) stringing invisible people into a web of a family.
 
I chirp at no one in particular "oh my GRANOLA these women had 14 kids each?!" and "can you believe this name? Nimrod Stillwell? Why? WHY?"

Zoe sighs and Zack ignores me.

Minutes later I have to talk again. I have to share my excitement

 Zack! My ancestors were part of the war of 1812! and the Revolutionary War! I can be a Daughter of the American Revolution.  Isn't this awesome?

Awesome for you, he says, still unconvinced that what I'm doing is as satisfying as MarioKart.


They stare at the TV and ask what we are going to do, next, after Mommy stops compulsively mining for data, looking for gold.

 I don't answer the children and instead follow every research link, critically analyzing each bit of data before I accept it to merge in files (how could this mother be born after their child? How could this man be his own son's mother? Huh?)

Then I found some true treasure.

 Behold, the OTHER Boleyn Sister, is my daughter's 15th great-grandmother.

But since the kids don't seem too excited, I'll keep it to you, to me and let it unfold itself into a Forrest Gump romp through history.

 

The American Maze: Popcorn for Everyone

Recently my Abuelo sponsored a few events for the children in the bilingual preschool program at Hispanic Unity,  our favorite organization which empowers new Americans with language skills, employment referrals and access to social services as they navigate the American maze. Thanks to excellent timing I was able to take my kids and visit his charity in action at Hispanic Unity.

The magician's program was for 10am, but we arrived at 10:05.  The staff snuck us into the room full of preschool kids. Abuelo, wearing a coat and tie, stayed standing for the show while the rest of us slipped down on too-small chairs and giggled. 

Don't ask me about all the specifics of the magician's act, I was quite busy not watching it by taking pictures and whispering. I do remember the part where the magician had a lizard that kept squirting water every time she turned her heads. One kid shouted out in an imperfect English translation of what was going on, "He is throwing the water at the kids!" A skinny pigtailed girl standing in the back of pack of kids explained whole scene in rapid quiet Spanish to a tiny  girl who couldn't see because of the taller kids in front of her.

The English-speaking magician moved on to part of her act with a magic coloring book. 

The kids play along and giggle. Most of them understand what she's asking them to do; a few turn to their neighbors with frowning faces. They fake their way through the normal kids-magic-show-craziness by doing what everyone else is doing, stomping their feet, waving their hands, shaking their heads. Our collective magic works, we fix the coloring book, and the magician moves on to the next part of her act.

There will be popcorn, she says, popcorn for everyone. 

The kids don't look too excited.

 The magician pulls out a clear container that when she flips one way it's filled with popcorn; when she flips it the other way all we can see is plain unpopped dried corn.

She keeps talking, saying something about how everyone could have popcorn after the show ends but how she couldn't find any corn to pop, then pretends not to see the popcorn become kernels of corn.

A little girl in the front, a tiny one, maybe even the one who had been sitting in the back a few minutes before, stands up and points at the container and announces, "Maiz!"

Her Spanish was so delicate and perfect you could hear the accent mark over the letter "i" - the one that makes the word sound like "ma-eeeez" instead of "maze."

A bunch of small powerful voices joined her, pointing and shouting in their perfect Spanish "ma-eeeez" at the suddenly terrified magician who was looking on the ground around her.


Mice? Mice? She asked the adults, not kidding, but keeping in her character but showing concern that there might be rodents swarming around her legs.

 A lesser person would've shrieked and jumped on a table, I'm sure. 

"Maiz means CORN" a bunch of kids translated loudly for her, laughing with her. 

That day those bilingual children all took a step forward right then, sticking together and navigating the American maze. (I hear there's popcorn for everyone at the end.)

A Nice Kick in the Face

While I was at Tita's house and Tita was in California, I had an afternoon of pizza and pastelitos and story telling and story gathering with my cousins, the children of Abuelo's sister Tia Fifi.

By the time they were leaving  mind was full, I knew something I hadn't known before, and the old and new pieces of the story - our story - and I wanted to push pause and sit down and start writing and rewriting right then.

But of course I couldn't, even though I had my Mac, my faculties, my imagination (but no red wine because as a guest in my Mom's house I was afraid of opening the wrong bottle, the expensive one) but not one drop of the miraculous God-particle of intention, the force which makes stories go from imaginary to material.

I knew that after they left I would clean up, I would call my Mom and tell her about the day, and then I would sit with Abuelo at dusk watching the birds. I knew I would fall into another quiet writingless evening, the latest in a long streak of silence and I had no problem at all with that.

As Eduardo walked out the door, in between hugs, he asked again when my next book would be done.

I said I was working on it, I'd know when I had an ending. I said something like  "Just like Marvin's Book, I knew when it was over.  I'm sure I'll know the ending to this when I see it. Or it hits me. I'm open to that."

I thought he would nod, I thought he would be pleased by that. He was my older cousin, so mature and worldly in ways both Cuban and Miami.

He frowned a little and proclaimed, "I'll tell you one thing I know for sure. My father didn't spend 18 years as a political prisoner in Cuba for you to just have some nice visits to Cuba."

I held my hand up to my own cheek and said ow, thanks, I think that's just the kick I needed to get writing. 

He laughed and left, they all left, and later I again didn't write.

Not that night or the next night, or the next few nights when I slept with the balcony door open to ocean and let myself be deafened to sleep by the her relentless roar.

A week later the pain in my jaw, the numbness on half my face, the invisible swelling I've attributed to an invisible punch and not something worse, has improved.

With every word I write it feels a little better, like I've chosen the right thing to believe in.

************

http://www.melissalaughing.com/p/no-island-is-island.html

July Wins

I can't tell you when but I gave up on July, gave the month back to God and the universe and said here this doesn't fit. It's too tight, too hot, I'm done with it.

Apparently July cannot be given back and there is no fast forward button to get through it smoothly. Just as the end of July was in sight and I could almost see my new semester around the corner, the universe sent me a horrendous headache, the big one, the one that brought freakish numbness on one side of my face that spread to my arm -- my writing arm.  

I slipped myself to the hospital and got enough attention to win the battle and get a good guess at what kind a war I might be fighting.

They would have had me stay longer but I couldn't, I just couldn't. I had too many things to do, I told them and I told myself as I signed the forms declining admission.  I had too much I needed to do before the end of July to hang out and watch the Olympics in a peaceful quiet private room, so I took myself out of there and back to Camp Mommy where I finally unpacked all the half-full tote bags from the trip we returned from several days before.

I did four loads of laundry. I swept, I mopped, I cooked breakfast and lunch for the kids and then moved furniture and keep cleaning. I called about an error on a bill (something I am loathe to do, I would do anything before that);  I filled out a form, I mailed a check and I took the kids to Walmart to buy more crayons, more glue, more things to keep them busy.

With dinner in the oven and all the hard work done I finally had time to call my Mom for the first time since the headache started.

She's with Abuelo so it's a quick conversation.

I know I have to share her but  I  I keep her on the phone to brag in listing detail about how many specific and tedious things I accomplished on this last day of July so I would have a perfectly wonderful fresh start in August.  I added, Hooray! Happy last day of July!

My Mom laughed at me.

Today isn't the last day, she tells me, and I don't want to believe her but of course she's right.

July wins.

The Other Lady, There All Along

My son commented the other day on my profile picture.

He hates it. Who is that crazy man I'm posing next to? Looks creepy to him.

It's me and Jose Marti, I remind him.

 I'm sure I've told them more Cuban  history than most children can tolerate.

Every bit of it seems to fall out my son's ears like water through a colander.

I remind him that I took a picture with a torso-sized Jose Marti statue while I was in Cuba, a trip that now seems to have occurred 5 years ago, not three months ago.

What's so great about Jose Marti, he asks, and from experience I'm guessing I have ten seconds to hook him.

Jose Marti  loved Cuba but bad things were going on, so he left and came to the US where he  travelled up and down the US organizing Cubans and inspiring them to fight to liberate their country from being a Spanish colony.

Some people think he's a great Cuban, but I also think he's an amazing American, a warrior for justice and freedom.

I lost my son at that point, and let the story go.

I'm sure if I would have had some Andrew Jackson-esque battles to re-enact for him our conversation would have gone longer. But he left me there, sitting with Jose Marti on my mind.

So I started scrolling through my iPhone looking back at the pictures from my trip.  It seemed I took so many pictures, way too many pictures, but now they don't seem to be enough.

I scroll back a little further in my phone pictures and see the pictures of bags in my office from students to Veterans.

 Then there are pictures of Zoe and her science project and then some other pictures from when tis iPhone used to be my Dad's phone.

Lots of pictures of hibiscus.

Smiling people, some I recognize, some I don't.

Because my kids are ignoring me I keep playing in the iPhone, happy for a minute free of interrogation (WHEN are we going to eat? WHAT are we going to eat? WHEN are we going to go? WHERE are we going to go? WHAT are we doing after that, after that, after the other thing?).  I'm surprised to recognize so many of the places my parents visited, although it looks different from my Dad's eyes.

My cousin, the cute physician, smiles brightly and warmly for my father. I didn't think I had a picture of her, and it's good to see her again. I keep going through, recognizing face after face, place after place. This is fun. In my Dad's Cuba, there are more pictures of people doing things, standing by things.   Less architecture, more group pictures, posed.

And then I get to a picture I don't recognize. At all.

Its from the one place I didn't have time to visit other than driving through.

Plaza Marti, named for my favorite guy.  There's a picture of my Mom standing next to it.

Only, I can't stop looking because I can't be seeing what I'm seeing.

On the pedestal, raised up about a story high, is Jose Marti.

 If you google his statue in Cienfuegos, that's what you'll see. Jose Marti, raised up.

 In an artistically symbolic way this makes sense because Marti was killed before setting foot back on Cuban soil for the revolution he helped organize and launch.  His leadership was mostly moral, spiritual, inspirational. As a soldier he lasted mere hours but his words linger for centuries.

But on the ground, standing there guarding him, as large and wonderful as him, is a lovely lady I recognized immediately.

No one told me I would find her sitting so boldly in Cuba, but  I forgive them. Maybe they didn't recognize her themselves, maybe they've been given an intentional blind spot in their history and it keeps perpetuating in their stories. 

But seeing this there is no ignoring the truth.

There she was, in her robes, I knew her immediately. 

There, in Cienfuegos, Cuba, was Lady Liberty, symbol of the Republic, symbol of freedom, justice and rule by law.  

The Cuban Republic was born in 1902, only about 15 years after the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York City.   This image was no accident; its a permanent reminder of a friendly neighbor who is permanently tied to Cuba, her history and future.

 She's been there all along, standing at the base of his statue, clearly representing the depth of US and Cuban ties and sympathies for generations, written in stone. 

Service, Remembered (From December 2008)

(Zoe and Zack at a memorial for US casualties of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars)

Thank You!

Thank you to to the following students who contributed generously to the Veterans Village 4th of July food drive:

• Nikki Scott
• Stephanie Torbush
• Shanita Norwood
• Gary Gaiotti
• Brittney Johnson
• James Johnson
• Gary Gaiotti
• Carlos Crane
• S. Lemacks
• James Johnson
• Melanie Williams
• Shaliah Smith
• Cameron Greene
• C. Hicks
• Denise D.
• Lisa Knighten
• Ashley Harrison

*let me know if I missed anyone!

Here are about half the bags -- and my kids, and Denise (hi Denise!) -- 

while I was taking these down to my car, my office filled back up with more bags!

Food everywhere!!

When I finally filled the car up to drive to Veterans Village, 

my poor kids were surrounded by bags of food. See Zack?

 It was awesome*

Your Horse Has Diabetes (But I'm Much Better)

During Prohibition, there was an urban rumor circulating that went something like this.

Once there was a guy named Mac who loved his gin and whiskey  so much -  he stocked up on a bottle a week (sometimes a bottle a day) during all of 1919 as the country faced the countdown to Prohibition.
 

Years later, when Mac’s supply ran out, he discreetly asked a few friends for a referral and had a few unfortunate disappointments before he found a bootlegger who brought him the smoothest,  mellowest moonshine they nicknamed “Mama’s Milk.”

Just when Mac was coming to rely on his new treasure, Mac’s bootlegger gets arrested. 

Or was it shot? Yes. He was shot. Dead. No more moonshine for poor Mac.

Instead of moping around, Mac gets an inspiration.  He fills a tiny shot glass with a sample of his precious remaining jelly jar of Mama's Milk moonshine and has a courier deliver it to the local pharmacist  in a paper bag with a discreet note (wrapped around a $1 bill) requesting all possible tests be done to determine the liquid’s content. 

Three weeks later, a thin envelope arrives from the Pharmacy: Your horse has diabetes.

When I finish telling the story to my history class, I pause for a second as students scribble pieces of the story down. 

Hands shoot up into the air.

A guy in the back row sitting towards the lecture hall’s back door asks, “Was it horse pee? Really?”

I shake my head.  "Urban myth. Remember? That’s how I started the story?"

Heads nod. Most of them understood. 

A few girls in the middle of the room  are still writing so I take another question.

A guy in second row from the back offers, “I peed in a bottle once. At a football game….”

I shake my head at the randomness of his statement and the class laughs.

He continues, “these people kept stealing our beer….” 

And this is it. I fall on my knees looking to the sky, silently asking "Why is this student telling us this? Why?"

 He continues, “you know those beer balls?....” and continues his college-esque story about punishing some random thieves with urine and, well, I didn't really listen because as I  allowed him (this once, and only this once) to ramble on, I remain my knees,  on the floor, holding my head like "I'm losing my mind, what do I do?"

I'm teasing. 

They know I'm teasing. 

I run my classes like a totalitarian dictatorship -- no cellphones, no computers, no talking, no tardiness, no getting up and coming back in. I do my best to not waste their time, so that we have digressed for less than a minute is forgiveable in the course of a semester.

After we laugh together for a moment or two, I pop back up, brush myself off and redirect our attention to Prohibition, then to the  Scopes Trial.  

I’m not sure the class knew it (they will know it now) but somehow, when I fell down today, I got back up whole again, laughing again and ready to write again. 

Its no coincidence the healing happened in my one class who already knows the whole story behind this book.

Tale of a Town Founder, Queen, and Pioneer Medicine Woman

Subtitle: What Would Genghis Khan Do?
Sub-Subtitle: My Adventure on the Electronic Oregon Trail

-------------

If you have noticed I haven't written much lately you might think I'm busy with Marvin's Book coming out any second.

You'd be wrong. I'm done with Marvin's Book, there is nothing left to write.

I have been busy taking care of my special little frontier town nestled between the fish-filled lakes in Oregon that lives on my iPad.

At first I loved my special town, and I happily spent my limited energy (why do they limit my energy?!) clearing trees, planting tomatoes and building a happy little pen for my irrationally calm and non-violent flock of ducks, pigs, chicken and cows.

I fished. I hunted. I visited other towns and helped them harvest.


As queen, founder and richest person on the block, I built houses too - mishmash groups of cheap huts, moderate Victorians, log cabins and luxury townhouses.

 A one-woman political machine, I collected their rent and used the money to build medical facilities, a sheriff's office, a school house so they could hear stories of their wonderful town.

When floods came,  I rebuilt the little frontier homes.
They loved me.
I accepted their praise.

When buffalo tore through, I replanted the virtual crops.
They cheered.
I built them a glorious new town hall.

When my courageous settlers were bitten by snakes or fell sick to measles, I  did my best to save them by producing the magical mix of "things" needed to get my settlers to produce in order to cure them: herbs, splints, a mortar and pestle, bandages. 

At one point I had 8 medical facilities churning out the ingredients for these cures,  each of which required a constant supply of of lumber and food, so I'd have to send myself on endless romps through my expanding (healthy) frontier town,  planting crops and chopping down trees to fuel my medically advanced utopia.

Due to limited energy, all I could do is fuel this direly important medical mission.  As soon as I cured one settler, another fell ill. 

I stopped collecting rent.

I stopped fishing for cute catfish.

I didn't visit other towns to help them harvest.

I stopped visiting town market,  the tavern, the saloon and I didn't even have  energy left to shoot a disoriented black bear as it tore right by me through my frontieropolis.

All I could do was stay in a tedious cycle of production and consumption keep making medicine to keep my people alive.  When the game forced me to run out of energy after a certain number of turns, it offered me an option to spend real cash to keep playing and keep my settlers and their little town going. Tempting as it sometimes felt (especially late at night) I knew better and spent my time-outs playing game after game of Spider Solitaire.

Then it dawned on me.

I must have planted my frontier town somewhere in a sickness-filled pit like Jamestown.

No wonder the land was so cheap.  No wonder the natives didn't fight me for it. It was crappy land, and the people were going to die, or I was going to die of boredom trying to keep them alive.

So I dug deep into my heart and decided it was my responsibility to use the best medicine for everyone - the current and future generations of my little frontieropolis.

I asked myself, "What would Genghis Khan do?"

And then I knew, I really knew.
Before another electronic settler in my frontieropolis could break their arm, drink brown water or be bitten by a snake, before another little girl could fall ill to measles,  I did the best thing I could as their leader, their medicine woman, and the town's sole founder, only politician, queen, empress, dictator and resident nuclear physicist in training.

I deleted my little frontier town and saved them all from their inevitable suffering. And I did it, without warning or permission or any discussion at all.

I think Genghis Khan would be proud; maybe Colin Powell, too....

Pounding the Meat

It is the usual evening summer evening around here.

Zack is competing against the world on MarioKart Wii.

Zoe is skyping.

I'm in the kitchen getting dinner ready.

I'm just following step #3 of a recipe when Zoe shouts out over my clanging and banging to her skype friend, "I can't hear you! My mom is pounding the meat!"

She pauses and says, "That sounded so wrong."

Then she sat in silence and so I offered, unsolicited, "Tell her 'My mom is banging the pork chops!'" but she ignored me.

It is the usual summer evening around here.

Chapter 12: The Queen: There You Are

The phone rings in our L'Union hotel room in Cienfuegos, Cuba.

 It's Mom's cousin, the one with Abuela's eyes. She is here to be with us today. Its dawning on me that Tita and I haven't set foot out of the hotel without a relative to keep and eye on us and wonder if we are allowed to be unescorted, if somehow she received a government notice like "Hey, your crazy relatives are coming to town - keep them in line. Love, etc."

She's downstairs, so is Machete, who will be driving us around again today. After a kiss kiss hug hug, she shows off that she's wearing new shoes, the ones my Mom took off for her to try on last night as she left when the rain stopped.

 My Mom loved those shoes but what the heck, next week she can go to Steinmart and  buy some more. They have 50 years of Christmases and Birthdays to catch up on anyway.

Machete is parked where the huge European bus had been.  I walk out, take one good smell of Cienfuegos air, and duck into the airconditioned Kia minivan, the one we rode in on our way from the airport a lifetime ago.   I slip into my same seat in the back, next to my Mom's cousin who holds my hands and hugs me a lot.

Mom confirms with Machete that we are going first to the old cemetery. He takes us out of the colonial downtown, out of all I'd seen of Cienfuegos, and off through a long street lined with house that looked very much like the mix tiny and grand Coral Gables (one that had never recovered from Hurricane Andrew, that is) and after that down an industrial area.

The further out we drive from the city center, the worse off the houses seemed to be.

We passed horses pulling carts and people pulling carts and people carrying food, and people carrying wood.

We passed people who were walking off to get something to carry home.

On the second floor of an old apartment I see a Dalmatian jumping up up up trying to get into the shady house through the window.

A teenage girl weaves out into the road and off on a side street, holding an infant with one hand and steering the bike with her other.  No one around her looks shocked, they just go on with getting things, getting rid of things, getting through another day in Cienfuegos.

By the time Machete rolls us down a rocky gravel road that looks to me like a low, small, cemetery I'm under the impression there is some sort of bold survival lawlessness among of the Cubans that I hadn't expected.   I like it.

My Abuelo has showed me a picture of this, and pictures of other landmarks in this city, I'm sure, but now, here, this is real and it is beyond delightful.

It is U shaped, with the top of the U closed off (mostly) to limit entrance.  Dark muscled men wearing blue colored jump suits walk on top of the wall, carting this and that, shouting down to a woman who looks very much in charge.

We slip out of the minivan, leaving Machete in the air-conditioning, and walk towards the entrance. The lady in charge says only Welcome, Welcome (in Spanish) and we pass by.

 I'm sure she lets us go in because we have flowers, we are here to visit Someone. Which means WE must be Someone. I like that and give her my best ladylike walk, even though I needed a shove at first because I I could have stood at the entrance for an hour.

 Rising up from the rubble is a colonial cemetery in a city founded by someone from New Orleans is cemetery that compete with any I've ever seen Uptown and by the French Quarter.  Because the site is above sea level, city founders got permission to bury their loved ones above ground, but only just a little.

The inside of the cemetery held about four rows of shamelessly ornate expressions of neoclassical grief and with a light touch of religion, like a dash of salt.

The interior of the outside wall was lined with markers. I was pretty sure it was soldiers and I checked back and bingo, I was right.  Cuba rose up for independence in the 10 Years War (1868-1878) and the 1895 Revolution (you know the one I mean - the one with Teddy Roosevelt, and Jose Marti,  the one we renamed the "Spanish American War") and only now,  here does it dawn on me that the Spanish soldiers, caught in what must have felt like a Civil War, died here.

I wonder if their families know where they are, I wonder if their granddaughters and greatgrandsons know to follow me, come here, come to Cuba.

Why did the Cubans rise up?  It's complicated, but standing here in a cemetary named "The Queen,"  I feel like that's the cue I'm supposed to start this story with.  The cemetery was built during the reign of Queen Isabella 2, the one I bet you haven't heard about.

The namesake of Spain's most beloved (to Spaniards) Queen Isabella, wife of Ferdinand, mother of Spain and a dynasty, Queen Isabella 2 was born into a complicated post-Napoleonic Europe. Her mother was Maria Cristina, a Bourbon from Austria, related to the Bourbons in France (and namesake of Bourbon Street).

Well, unmarried Isabella 2's ascension to the throne was enabled by the Spanish Cortes' suspension of Salic Law, the code that says that excludes women from inheritance and titles.

 When she took the throne her father's brother lead an uprising against her. She would eventually be ousted in the 1868 Revolution and her son would later rule.  History remembers this queen as having had twelve kids, none of whom were suspected to have been related to her French husband, who she publicly scorned.

So while Spain was going through her issues in the 1860s-70s, some people in Cuba rose up for political and social and economic equality. And by that, they meant equality with other nations, not equality among people in the Island, although the abolition of slavery was on the table at the time.  It didn't work, and she remained Cuba's colony until the next revolution, a generation later.

Mom walks down the cemetery's main aisle to almost the last spot before we hit the bottom of the U shape.

"There you are!" she proclaims and we hug and do a little victory dance for ourselves and for Abuela.

The Staircase Part 6: Abuela & The Keys

When I was satisfied that I communicated well enough in our limited improvised Spanglish I let Abuela go and I called my Mom. I described the windows, the air, something familiar that I knew was Cuba.  She accepted it immediately and proclaimed that she was named after me.

Named after me?

Yes.

This whole time? And I didn't know?

Nope. She laughed. I laughed. We are happy to find each other and keep each other this time around.

After years of therapy I ended up in Cuba, in the soul of family. Real or not real it felt completely right deep down at the core of  my imaginative heart.

I kept teaching college, working extra jobs to make ends meet.  Here and there I wrote chapters of a novel I started calling "Finding Cuba."

Then a student of mine, Marvin Scott died.

A week after that, I found out I was pregnant with Zoe.

I didn't go back to therapy again.

I taught. I mothered. I had another kid. I taught some more.

I earned tenure and in between all of that I grew closer and closer to Abuela who now wanted me to call her "Tata," the diminuative of Marta.

In June, 2007, not knowing Abuela would not live to see the end of that year, I wrote a story about escorting her to her death.

*********
http://www.melissalaughing.com/2007/06/abuela.html

My grandmother comes from a particular class and culture in Cuban history where women were not permitted much freedom.

Girls always took chaperones on dates, lived at home until married, knew how to embroider and play the piano.

Such a cultured and protected woman could expect a fine marriage with a Papi-style husband, one who works hard, cheats only when he's out of town, takes care of all the money, and -- of course! -- drives his wife wherever she needs to go.

After fleeing Cuba for New Orleans, Abuela had to take streetcars to work in a cafeteria where no one else spoke Spanish.

Later she carpooled to work with her married daughter to a job a downtown lab where she stained and read pap smear slides.

In all these years Abuela has never ever learned to drive.
Many times over the years she's gotten angry, gotten scared, gotten some backbone and threatened to go to driving school.

When Abuela was about 75, I offered to teach her to drive.

Heck, I taught my brother, I'm pretty relaxed, and hey -- this is Dad's car anyway -- why not?

Abuela said no.

Every time I came home for vacation, for holidays, for whatever, I'd shake car keys in front of Abuela.

"OK! Vamos!"

She would laugh and say "Ay! Si! Vamos!" but she wouldn't get up.

For years Abuela has continually refused the joy and privilege of learning to drive from me.

So about two years ago I started to threaten my Abuela.

Here is the story I told her.

I'll wait until she was completely deliriously old and frail, then I'll ask her to drive me somewhere.

If Abuela says she doesn't know how to drive, I'll make up some wonderfully accurate and descriptive stories about all the places in Cuba she's driven me.

Abuela will then feel a sudden burst of confidence, snatch the keys from me andwe'll be off.

Of course, when she actually does drive she'll kill herself, but that would be *fine* because her brain was expiring anyway.

Abuela and waves her hand at me, "Psssssht. I'm not afraid to die. I think it will be fun."

So when I went home this past week, I made sure to wave keys at Abuela, reminding her how much I love her.....

*********

That November Abuela suffered greatly from back pain which turned out to be a massive heart attack.  On November 27, after talking to her from her hospital bed,  I wrote "About those Keys"

http://www.melissalaughing.com/2007/11/about-those-keys.html

Abuela was in the hospital.

Cardiac ICU.
No, don't come down yet.
Just stay in Tallahassee, wait.

Great. So I did stay here. 

And I made up my own rules.

If I couldn't go down there, then no one could call me with bad news.
Not until after 5pm, after teaching, after lecturing, after I was a grownup all day.

Then, of course, I'd be ready to handle it.

On Monday I threw on my lucky dress, and taught my AMH 2020 class then took a field trip to FSU to lecture on Teaching College History.

On my way home, I called my mom and talked to Abuela. 

She sounded tired and distracted.

Of course, she's a celebrity in that hospital, probably getting foot rubs and extra morphine. 

Lucky her. 

I told her I loved her and that I'd see her when I drive down with the kids on December 18.

She laughed and told me I'd better bring down the keys, soon. She's ready to drive.

I think -- although I don't want to -- that I understood her, completely.

*******

The next day I write about weather.

Forecast: Peaceful Waters

Mom loses her voice under stress.

Which is fine, because she has her blackberry.

This also fine because it means that people can't call Mom and constantly ask for updates on Abuela's conditions.

Being a PR/Media specialist, Mom has found a way to manage this situation.

She's issuing written updates to my father whose job is then to stick to his script and disseminate the statements by phone.

And of course, there is a protocol.

First, dad calls Abuela's other children, Milly and Vincent.

Then he calls my brother Winn.

A fter that he should call me, then other cousins.

The noon update, today: "She continues to deteriorate."

This is a particularly meaningful and appropriate analogy for a family who resides in South Florida and New Orleans.

I imagine Hurricane Abuela, once a category 5 storm with a well defined eye and winds of over 200 miles per hour, downgraded to a category 1.

Then a tropical storm.

Then a disturbance.

Then peace.

******
After that, I wrote about, well -- you know.

Happy First Day

I woke up at 3:50am with a beeping phone.

I rolled over Zoe and swatted around the floor of the dark room for a second before finding the blinking source of the noise.

One new text message from Tita, telling me to not wear perfume when I came down today.

I knew that, I remembered that, but I guess after five days of being at her mother's side for 24 hours, my mom just wanted to make sure that every single detail was in line.

I texted her back "Thank you. I love you. Can you rest?"

She didn't text me back.

I couldn't sleep, so I roamed the house, took a shower, finished some laundry, packed the car for my ride to Fort Lauderdale to take part in exactly what I wasn't sure.

What I did know was that it was time to for the drive.

On Friday morning, during a tearful conversation, I asked my mom, "Isn't it time yet? I want to be there. Please say I can come."

Her response? A deep sigh, a sniff, resignation. "Almost. It's almost time."

That was enough for me.

My mind was made up. I heard what I needed to hear, and I made the decision no one could make for me.

Within hours I'd rented a car, arranged to cancel classes for part of the upcoming week, and took my brother up on his offer of a place to sleep.

Fantastic.

At almost exactly 6am Saturday morning, I was all set in my rented PT Cruiser, about to pull out of the driveway when I decided to text my mom again. "I'm leaving now. No texting from the road. I love you & Tata. Happy First Day of December!"

See, we have this little (but fiercely competitive!) game of wishing each other a "Happy First Day" first. This game, which involves our extended family and friends, has gone on for decades.


When I arrived in Pompano Beach, dad and I grabbed lunch and then headed to the hospital.

Abuelo was happy to see me, and told me how proud he was that I was giving a speech in Miami. That was a lie, of course, but I understood. Mom told her parents I was coming down for work, that way they wouldn't think that I .... that I was here for ...

So I only spent about 10 minutes in the hospital room.

My abuela was suffering much worse than I'd imagined.

She was suffering so badly that I was only really allowed to make brief eye contact and touch her cold tense hand before being shooed out of the room.

I had never before seen Abuela unlaughing, rocking, seized with pain.

Gone, already, was her her twinkle, and her wonderful splendid shamelessness.

My father and I caravaned toward the beach where he keyed me in at my brother's rental house.

Alone with my thoughts, I had a nice hard run, unpacked a few things, checked email, and considered a shower.

Beep. A text message.

Before I checked my phone, I prayed..... Please God don't let this be a text telling me she's gone. Please, please not yet.

It was my dad telling me to stop by Publix and buy something for mom.

Hooray, finally, I was part of things.

I arrived at Holy Cross at 6:05pm and headed to the 4th floor.

As I walked down the corridor I could see my abuelo (Holy Cross Hospital's Volunteer of the Year) still in his work clothes and tie, eating potato chips and looking out the sunset out a large long window.

"Geez," he greeted me, "you are too much!" Then he hugged me and whispered in my ear, "You're my number one." Together we returned to the hospital room where my mother's sister, Aunt Milly, and my cousin, Samantha, were sitting with my mom, comforting Abuela.

Abuela's attention was on my mom, like a baby bonding with its mother. "Mari... Mari..." then she'd try to breathe, hold her chest, lean back, lean forward... the entire time focused entirely on my mom.

For a few minutes I sat behind my mom, holding her while she held her mother, then -- in order to keep the room peaceful -- I left the room with Abuelo and stood out in the hall for a few minutes.

A male Filipino nurse joined us for some small talk.

Abuelo told the nurse that Thursday, December 6, would be their 63 anniversary. Did he think that Abuela would be home for that?

The nurse looked at me uncomfortably, stammered a vague answer.

I interuppted. "Abuelo, she can't stay in this pain for another five days..." 

He nodded his head, but I don't think he really heard me.

We returned to the room, and surrounded Abuela, gently.

She wanted to go, it was clear that she needed to go, but she couldn't.

Not yet.

Sam, Milly, Mom, Abuelo and I shifted turns so each of us held her cold hand, felt her anxiety, offered her a tiny drop of solace in the sea of pain that was drowning her.

Abuelo sat in a hard chair, saying a rosary.

At 7:25, Abuela called her daughter's names, and then called for Sam.

She didn't call me -- not by name -- I figured I was next so I stood before her, joining the circle.

Abuela took a deep breath, looked right at me, then at Sam, then she didn't breath again.

A tangible explosion of love and peace shot through the room, filling us all, expanding through the room and to eternity.

At 7:25, December 1, 2007, Marta Carmen Polo Fornias slipped out of her suffering and into heavenly peace.

Happy First Day, Abuela!

*****

And then this

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known"
Corinthians 13:12

It's about 8:15pm on Wednesday December 5 , and I am home in Tallahassee after a long drive from Fort Lauderdale.

I am surrounded by love, hugs, coloring pages and candy canes, all things that make me thirsty.

I open the cabinet, grab my favorite aqua cup, the one with the Mickey Mouse insignia so subtly and artistically etched on it, then cry.

This was HERS, I sob to the unlistening sink and the empty 2 liter of Sunkist.

Wave after wave of sadness and guilt wash over me.

I stole this cup from Abuela.

I did.

She had a set of 8 that my mother bought her at Downtown Disney a few years ago. One day I poured myself a "to go cup," stuck it in my car, and never returned it. 

Every time I've used it, I've thought, "nope, not going to give it back... not until I get myself a set..."
I always loved that set, and each of the countless times I've been to Downtown Disney I haven't made a single sincere effort to buy myself Mickey Mouse cups. 

Maybe I didn't really want my own cups. 
Maybe I just couldn't be honest. 
Maybe the truth was just too ugly.
What I wanted was Abuela's cups.

The cups aren't that old, and maybe they aren't very special looking, but they mean something to me.

I imagine that other people -- maybe people who aren't descended from refugees? -- have heirlooms like great-grandpa's rifle, great-great-Grandmother's teapot, lace curtains, WW2 letters, tiny silver spoons.

We don't.

So instead of things, we have traditions.

We lie. 

And then, of course, tell stories about our lies.

For example, my abuelos lied to their children when they were leaving Cuba in 1960.

Instead of saying "tell everyone goodbye, we are OUT of here!" they told the children it was just for a vacation.

This is forgivable.

Tearful goodbyes or packing sentimental things-- baseball gloves, love letters -- were red flags that have jeopardized their safety.

Just a small lie, but a memorable one nonetheless.

Years ago, my abuelo's sister -- Tia Fifi (http://laughingmelissa.blogspot.com/2006/09/no-funeral-no-food-fight.html) stayed at with Abuelo and Abuela house while recovering from a heart attack.

During her month-long visit, Tiafi's son Eduardo had a heart attack.

She kept trying to call him at home, but he wouldn't answer.

Because, of course, he was in the hospital.

Finally someone -- I won't point fingers here -- told her "Oh! Didn't you hear? Eduardo is in the Keys."

For awhile, every time someone was sick or dying, we'd say, "Oh? Visiting the Keys?"

Lies, lies, lies.

One year while I was home from graduate school for Winter Break my mother confided in me that she had three tickets for the Orange Bowl -- don't tell your father! 

Later that same day, my father pulled me aside to show me the three tickets he bought for the Orange Bowl -- don't tell your Mom!

When the three of us were together, Mom would rant about how she wished we could go to the game, how we couldn't afford tickets, how there were no tickets to be found.

Dad kept making speeches about how he wouldn't dream of going to the Orange Bowl and missing other games on TV.

Keeping their secrets and watching them lie made me physically ill.
This went on for a painful long week until game day, when they both broke it to me there really only was only one set of tickets.

Gotcha!

They laughed.

I cried.

We still see that as a positive family experience.

And then there's last Saturday, December 1.

I guess we couldn't tell my abuelos why I was really driving down.

Imagine "Melissa is coming here to say her last goodbye."

That's too deep.

Too real.

Too honest and painful.

So when I got to the hospital, Abuelo asked, "Where is it that you're giving a lecture again? University of Miami? On Cuban History? That's something! " I stammered, said something vague, changed the subject.

When I sat next to Abuela, my mom elbowed me, and I dutifully looked the woman right in the eyes and let out a string of lies.

"Aren't I lucky to be here, now, giving a paper? What a wonderful coincidence that they brought me down right now, and I can see you?" 

Abuela pulled her hand out from under mine, narrowed her eyes.

I could hear her thinking all sorts of curses for me.

Maldita. 
Descarada. 
Sinverguenza. 
Mentiroza.
Comemierda.

And worse.

She knew why I was there.

And now that she no longer sees things, "through a glass, darkly" I just knowAbuela forgives me for lying to her on her last day on earth.

It was, after all, a cherished and unbroken family tradition.*****

And after that, I stopped writing for awhile. 

Understandable.