Birthday Story: Part 1 of 3 - Big Plans

 On Zoe’s 16^th birthday I didn’t throw her a huge party or buy her a car, but when she accidentally opened my birthday presents my parents sent me instead of opening her own, I just smiled warmly and ran with it. 

This is a big deal because I don’t get too many birthday presents so when they come I savor them, sometimes happily making myself wait weeks to open them.  

Yay, a funny solar powered frog that hangs in a tree and bounces!! 

Yay, a gift card to Walgreens!! 

After Zoe finished whatever else and was looking like teenage angst was about to grab her by the ankles I got us out of the house. 

First we went far across town and walked up and down the aisle of a makeup store to get a present for a friend of hers.

 I almost buy this super cool eyeshadow palette, then I almost buy the other once, and then I stand in line and almost buy the palette that the other ones were imitating but then I just don’t want to -- no, actually, I just physically can't -- spend that much money on eyeshadow when people are hungry and cold in this world so I walk out empty handed but happy.

We drive to a bookstore and Zoe buys another present for another friend and I decide to force myself to buy a book, a real tangible printed book. I almost buy this one, then the other, then barely can decide between two of them and finally pick one.  

This whole thing makes Zoe laugh and after we pay we walk into the cold darkness laughing. 

Where next? She shrugs. I shrug. She thinks we are going home but oh no, I have plans. 

Big plans.

I take her to Walgreens.

We walk in and are greeted with WELCOME TO MOE’S just kidding, they copied Moe’s and shout WELCOME TO WALGREENS, which is equal parts awkward and familiar like most rituals.

Zoe asks what we are there for and I tell her to get whatever mascara she wants. Her eyes bug out a little. She puts one in my basket and I see it’s buy one get one 50% off. Get TWO. She shakes her head in disbelief. TWO? Yes, TWO, it’s going on the gift card! We giggle and walk slowly up the makeup aisle.

Sixteen years ago, you were just born and I couldn’t put you down! Everyone was gone and I wouldn’t let the nurses take you so I could sleep.  I couldn’t put you down and I couldn’t stop staring at you and you weren’t sleepy so we just stayed up all night staring at each other.

Zoe nods. I tell her this story each year. It’s part of our thing.  I continue.

You never cried. You just hung out looking at things and holding my finger so tightly. It was the longest night of my life. Yours too, probably.

Zoe nods and I ask if she needs nail polish. She hesitates. It’s your birthday! Get it!! She grabs the polish she’d been eying and throws it in.   

We continue.

Need a hairbrush? No.

 Need Band-Aids? No.

 Sanitary pads? MOM!

Leggings? Yes. We stock up on leggings, giddy as we dig though the colors and sizes. Pink? NO! Navy? Yes! Black? Get two!

We walk down the toy aisle, nothing.

The school supply aisle, nothing. Of course. 

We skip the cleaning supplies and seasonal decor.  

I am overtaken with an urge and announce, Follow me, I’m getting a Red Bull. 

Zoe follows me then as I grab one from the Walgreens refrigerator, she suggests I should get the BIG one. 

I do, and ask her what she’d like. 

She picks an iced coffee and we stand in line to pay, feeling like birthday millionaires.

We get home and Zoe disappears into her phone and her world. 

I fall into the series Cuba Libre on Netflix.

Zack walks out of his room, says hello, turns a corner and howls like someone has died.

(continued)

Our Last Trip to Cuba #16: Buenos Dias and Nipples Everywhere

 Mom and I woke up about the same time, and instead of packing before breakfast we headed down for coffee and to get our heads straight to face the day.  I don’t like to face people before my coffee but out we go, shoving and kicking the bloated door, walking the windy hall that overlooked the front of Palacio Valle.  

In another world, I would just run down the stairs but here and now that seems a bit much, especially if it would mean leaving my mom and getting sweaty in fresh mascara, so we wait for the cutting-edge-in-1959 elevators to arrive and bring us to breakfast. 

We stop on the fifth floor and two men in their 40s or 50s enter, both with short hair and polo shirts. They look Russian. Or maybe Swedish.  Canadian, perhaps. 

I don’t know what language to speak so I smile and then look down at my shoes like they’re the cutest things I ever saw. 

The elevators stops again and a brunette man and blonde woman enter. They look like they are dressed for golf in Palm Beach, they are in a different Cuba than I’m in.  

She looks around at us and says Buenos Dias and everyone muttered the same thing back and then she turned to her man friend and started speaking plain old English, loudly, complaining about a personal pain in a way she would not have done if she thought we could understand her. 

 I love this, I’m trying to not giggle.  

No one has ever thought I look anything but American, so I feel strangely invisible and liberated.

The couple exits the elevator first, then the men stay back and let my mom and I step out.

I say “thank you” without thinking and the men say “you’re welcome” in harmony with no accent at all.  Awesome.

I don’t know where they headed but Mom and I went to the breakfast that was included with our room. 

We get the same waiter as we had the day before, and again I ask to please have a cup of Cuban coffee, since I’m in Cuba and all, and again he apologizes that it isn’t included with the meal and asks for the money up front. I give him $5 and wait.  Mom goes off to order eggs and whatever, leaving me at our table to read a Marian Keyes novel on my Kindle app and peek at the two women sitting next to me thumbing through a guide book planning their day. Their body language said they were on their honeymoon, whispering so low I couldn’t even tell you what language they were speaking.

The art on the walls decorating this restaurant at Hotel Jagua is a bit more “artsy” than I would see anywhere I would have breakfast in the USA (Village Inn, IHOP, Mickey D’s, Chick-fil-a) and before the amazing waiter could bring my tiny cup of perfect coffee I counted 5 naked breasts and two round naked female butts in the paintings that lined the wall to my left.  I could not unsee the exaggerated sexuality that vibrated in orangey reds and cold blues, and when Mom sat down I told her there were nipples everywhere but she didn’t seem to care and told me to go get some food. I walked the empty buffet and like yesterday just sawed off a piece of warm baguette and plopped butter on my plate. Not much, but enough -- I was sure -- to get me through what we were going to face in our last hours in Cuba.

(continued)  

Our Last Trip to Cuba #15: Like Gilligan

My students took an exam two Fridays ago that I couldn’t grade for an entire week.  On the syllabus it says that they only have quizzes and no “EXAMS” but this “quiz” is actually 10 page-long essays because I intentionally mislead my anxious students so they wouldn’t disappear before the class even warms up. 

Not knowing grades immediately is hard for them. I know this because Zoe checks her grades 5, 10, 15 times a day. She expects her grades to updated quickly and to always know exactly where she stands in her classes by checking her grades like I check my bank account.

This is a bit of a problem for my students who come to college expecting grades to be posted quickly because I wasn’t raised to teach college that way.  130 students writing 10 essays each equals a vague number that Liberal Arts Math from 1986 tells me is “a lot of work but part of being a professor.”  

I tell you all of this because I have started each class this past week with “I haven’t graded your exams yet because I have to finish writing this entire book before my Mom’s BIG birthday – ya’ll know how hard it is to get something nice for your parents.”  In my whole life I have spent 12 days in Cuba over three trips with my mom.  We have only travelled together for 12 days out of our combined 100+ years in life, and every minute of those trips was sacred and worth being recorded in stories.

My students understand, they agree I need to find balance and be a good daughter.

Or maybe the word “agree” is misleading: a few nod their heads, some exhale and take mental naps while most of them just text away in text land, and I think they wonder if I tossed their exams in trashcans or into ditches like those crazy postal workers we rarely read about but remember forever when mail doesn’t come.  

The entire week has passed and so has my Mom’s birthday but I’m not quite done with the story, we have the entire last – and MOST EVENTFUL -- day left to discuss.  I post their grades and also post bloopers from their quizzes so that we can giggle together.  Then I get back to writing.

When I left you my Mom and I were dropped off at our hotel by a sketchy driver who we now love forever.  We walk through the empty lobby, the stand by the mirrored elevators and wait for one to come for us while I notice again how many things have Che Guevara’s face on them. He’s like the Zack Efron of the Cuban Revolution and I’m not sure that Che would love that his legacy has been Cuba making money off his image selling anti-capitalist t-shirts, postcards and calendars.

Mom  changes her pants, I slip into something else and we take sips of our shared bottle of “safe” water and fall asleep quickly. 

I turn the white noise app on my iPhone to SUPER HIGH and pray there won’t be all that banging on the wall again tonight. 

There isn’t. The night passes quickly and dreamlessly.

I wake up before my alarm to pleasant silence.

The sun is already up so I get out of bed and open the sliding glass door and step out to our tiny balcony. 

For a second I think I hear a loud plane overhead and I get ridiculously excited and for a moment I lose myself in being Gilligan lost on an island hoping for a quick rescue but no, the sky is quiet and empty; a boat skittles across the bay near the Hotel Jagua and slows down by the Cienfuegos Yacht Club right out of my sight line.

When I go back to the room my Mom is awake and getting dressed.

It takes me less than a minute to be ready and then we are off to breakfast.  We don’t say it, we never say it, but we both know this will be the last day that we will see TiaLourdes alive on this earth.

We have come to say three days of goodbye, and today is our last day.