Welcome to another Throwback Thursday. It’s always fun sharing with you! This is a picture of me and my sis back when we were really young! I think I was about 4 or 5 in this photo and she was 2.
#ThrowbackThursday Baptism Day
My nephew and godson, who also happens to be born on my b’day, just had a baby with his lovely wife and two weekends ago, we went to the baptism. This photo is of his mom’s, my sister’s, baptism in Cuba. That’s my dad all the way to the left and my brother all the way to the right. I’m the little curly-haired girl next to the man holding the baby – my sister!
#ThrowbackThursday My Grandma
There are people who are so influential in your life that you miss them every day. My mom was such a person, but so was her mom, my grandmother Nieves. I’m actually named after her since my real first name is Caridad de las Nieves, but when I was naturalized I had to change that to Caridad and Nieves became my middle name.
My mom was a working mom so my grandma was the one who was home for us, made dinner, chased after us to clean up and all-in-all, provided us with stability and wonderful stories of growing up in Spain and her life in Cuba. She was a strong woman in more ways than one. She survived going from Spain to Cuba and then to the U.S. She survived the loss of a son at an early age (she never talked about this) and the premature loss of my mom. She was stubborn and had a temper, but luckily my grandfather was a saint. But she always loved us and took care of us and we knew we could count on her to be there for us.
She got to see grandchildren and great-grandchildren and even in her nineties, she was still amazing. This is a picture of me and my grandmother. It was taken in Cuba when I was just a little one.
#ThrowbackThursday My Mom & Old Time Grace
Whenever I see this picture, I think of how more formal people used to be and how the photos they took were filled with what I call “old time grace.” Of course, you didn’t just snap off a selfie back then. I’m sure having a photograph taken was expensive and quite an event, so you wanted to look your best.
This is a photo taken of my mom in Spain, I think. My grandparents had gone back to visit family before they returned to Cuba. My grandparents had plans to return to Spain to live, but the Spanish Civil War broke out and my grandparents just never got back there.
Many many years later, we would all have to flee Cuba and come to the U.S. and my grandfather would never see his native land again. My family finally visited Spain in 1973 to see where my grandparents had come from in Galicia and to find the family that had gotten lost over the years.
Anyway, my beautiful and adorable mother! Isn’t she lovely?
My Writer’s Journey Part 2 #amwriting
A few weeks ago I shared with you the start of my writer’s journey and although I got the writing bug in the fifth grade, it wasn’t until high school that I once again sat down to think about writing something longer than a short story or class assignment.
As some of you may know, I was born in Cuba and left when I was quite young. That story is a long one and filled with adventure in many ways, but the story of what came before was what inspired my first book.
Throughout my life I’d heard bits and pieces about how my parents had worked with the Civic Resistance in Havana to help bring about change on the island. I’d also heard how they realized that the change they had wrought, namely putting Fidel Castro in power, was totally not what they had expected. Because of that, they had started working with many of the same people to bring about change again. Of course, that’s what prompted my parents’ precipitous escape from Cuba and started a nearly two year struggle to get the rest of the family out of the country.
But the “after” part is for another time. It’s the “before” part that inspired the first novel I wanted to write, a romantic adventure about a wealthy Philadelphia Main Line woman who goes down to Cuba and falls in love with a handsome doctor who is involved in the rebellion. In real life, it was my mother who was the rebel and briefly engaged to a rich Main Line man. His family didn’t approve and so that romance ended not-so-happily, but in my books there is always a happily-ever-after.
I gleaned what info I could from family and friends and books so I could write that romance set during the Cuban revolution. Off and on during my high school days, I did that work and built the story in my head. I asked for a typewriter (no computers in my day!) and desk for high school graduation and pictured myself slaving away to write that novel.
I’m not sure my mom approved on many levels. For starters, she rarely talked about Cuba and what had happened. I know it had hurt her deeply to be so wrong and bring about such horrific change to the country she loved. Once we came here, we became American and moved away from all that, I think in part because remembering was too painful for her.
I’m not sure she approved of my thinking of writing as a possible career choice. I’d already been accepted to a few colleges and in her mind there were only a few professions that would allow her daughters to prosper, law and medicine being at the top of the list. Writer, not so much.
I didn’t get that typewriter or desk for high school graduation, but that didn’t stop me from collecting all my notes and research so I could start writing my novel during the summer before college. That decision shocked my mother I’m sure, but she went along with it.
Her office was getting rid of this awful pink paper and so she brought some home for me to type my first draft on. We weren’t well off so things like reams of paper were not in the budget.
Somehow the pink fit the romantic undertones in the novel. LOL!
I didn’t finish that novel that summer, but I got at least a hundred or more pages done. I kept at it during free time in college while I was a Science Major with my eye set on a career as a doctor. That’s my hubby and I in the summer after our freshman year of college.
I figured, doctors read and doctors write. I could always do the writing in my spare time and finish my novel.
By the time college was done, I was a little closer to having a finished work, but life has a funny way of throwing a curve your way just when you think you know where you are going.
I graduated magna cum laude, but I didn’t get into medical school. My mom had left her job to join a new law firm and I went to work with her while I decided what to do. But even though there was some hesitation about my future as a doctor, I was sure of one thing: I was going to finish my novel.
My First Christmas in America
My nephew is getting married in September which is very exciting! As part of the preparations for the wedding, my sister has been rounding up some family photos. She shared this one with me. It was one I don’t ever recall seeing and yet it’s a special one.
This is my sister and me on our first Christmas in America.
That’s me in the back, closest to the tree, a Charlie Brown one if ever I saw one and yet you can see how happy we were.
We were somewhere safe. We were with my parents again. It had been nearly a year and a half since my parents had been forced to flee Cuba and came to the United States to request political asylum. My sister and I had remained with my maternal grandparents in Cuba, expecting that all of us would soon leave shortly to join my parents in the United States.
It didn’t happen that way. Not with Castro.
It’s a long story, but seeing this picture and our joy, I know that things worked out as they should have even if the road to get here was difficult.
Seeing where I’ve gone in all those years, how our family has prospered thanks to this Nation, I know the sacrifice and journey was worth it.
Thanks for coming by today! I hope you all have a lovely Tuesday.
#ManCandyMonday Diego Luna
My daughter and I sat down on Friday night to watch DIRTY DANCING: HAVANA NIGHTS. As sequels that are prequels go, it was a really good movie. Solid basic premise, a wonderful cameo with Patrick Swayze, a flavor of the Cuba of yesterday, and wonderful music.
As for the leads, my daughter just loved Diego Luna although I can’t really seem to get enthusiastic about him. How about you? Does Diego warrant the title of Man Candy on this Monday?
Photo Credit: David Shankbone