...la tetera no llega al suelo...

I remember watching the movie, “An American Tail”, with Cristina. She would always get very sad when Feivel would get lost in the ocean and start yelling Papa…Papa…and the father aboard the boat would yell …Feivel…Feivel….. To this day I think she does not like that movie and gets a headache when she sees it…... My kids are very sentimental… we watched the movie the Lion King in Disney World and when Mustafa is killed…….. I was covered with crying kids in the movie theater. Sad thing was… I was crying too.

There was one famous musical number in “an American tail” where all the mice sing:

"….In America there are no… cats… And …..the streets are made of cheese."

Most people, upon hearing that song would think of West Side Story (…I like to be in America..) I, on the other hand remember when I was very small…

…My parents thought that America was the greatest place there was. In America you can do anything. America had the best athletes, except of course for the baseball players and boxers. As proof of America’s superiority my father would point out, while watching a movie, that the Germans would ask for American cigarettes. Even the matches were better in America. (They had just imported some Russian matches and they would go out before the match reached the cigarette, do not ask how I know that but it was true.) After the “revolution” Cuba had lost touch with America and what was going on there. Wild rumors would circulate on how advanced the Americans were. One of these was

…En los Estados Unidos cuando se abre una botella de Coca Cola, ya esta fria. No hay necesidad de ponerla en el Frigidaire. (In the United States, when you open a Coca Cola bottle, it is already cold. There is no need to refrigerate it.)….

And

…En los Estados Unidos, si a un bebe se le cae la tetera de la cuna, la tetera no llega al suelo. No hay necesidad de esterilizarlas. (In America if a baby drops a pacifier from the crib, it will not reach the floor. There is no need to sterilize it.)

This was in 1964, only five years after the embargo began. I kept hearing about these inventions.

…la ropa se lavaba sola… (clothes would get cleaned by themselves)

I could not wait to go to Miami, where my brother and sister were. I had not seen them in four years. They had come to the United States with my uncle. My parents were afraid that Roberto would be drafted into military service. In Cuba you would be drafted at the age of 12. All of us really missed them. I would get to see them again and could open the Coca Cola bottles and just watch them instantaneously get cold. And throw a pacifier and watch it float.. and dirty the clothes as much as possible, it did not matter anyway. America became a mythical place. I knew that we were in line to go to America but had to wait a number of years to get there. I would ask my father things such as:

… Papi, es verdad que en America uno puede volar en avion sin tener que esperar? (Dad is it true that in America you could fly on an airplane and not have to wait for years?) He would reply..mijo en America puedes ir a el aeropuerto y comprar pasaje para viajar ese mismo dia. (You could buy tickets and fly on the same day). I would think to myself WOW…..

Every once in a while Teresa or Robert would write us letters, in the letters they would place things for us. They were thin items because over there they would open all the mail before you got them. If it was too valuable, it would never get to us. ….. In one letter they placed a throw away ball point pen. This thing was amazing. You could click it and the point would come out. If you clicked it again it would go back in. It also had some letters on the side. I do not remember what they were but I believe it was the name of a hotel or a restaurant, maybe a bank…. We were very impressed. (I am sure there were pens in Cuba, I just had never seen one like this one.) Other times they would place a stick of Wrigley’s gum in the envelope. ……WOW!!!!! Carlos and I would share the stick. He would break off a piece about half a cm on each side and give it to me. He would break another piece about the same size for himself. We would save the rest for later. You could not taste anything. We all thought it was great, however. Not all food was available after the “revolution”. We were not starving, as anyone who saw me at that time would attest, but we did not get our choice of food. We would eat the same thing every day. Potaje. Potaje de garbanzo, potaje de judias…mas potaje… Carlos would tell me about this mythical food, it was called jamon. He remembered when he had tried it the year before. It was pink. I kept asking him questions about ham. I had no idea what to expect. Apparently we were only allowed to have it once a year. Carlos had heard the news that we were about to have jamon. I was thrilled with enthusiasm. …..Esta noche comiamos jamon…... That night Lydia, mi tata, served us each one slice of ham. Again we cut it into small pieces so it would last longer. We kept saying …WOW… I was kind of

disappointed but I did not say it.

We could not wait to go to America. Things were getting scarce. My little brother Juan Pablo had to be in a hand-me down playpen. These playpens were not made from cloth mesh or plastic vinyl, they were made out of wood. They looked like a crib but they were square. They had vertical bars which looked like the child was in prison. Think of Michael J. Fox and uncle Joey in Back to the Future. This playpen had been used by a number of us and it was not in the best of shape. Juanpi figured out the playpen was not the strongest and actually maneuvered one of the bars off the playpen. Then he took off another one. One day we found him instead of in the playpen, on the floor. He was one happy Cuban kid. He was gateando (means crawling but literally means making like a cat) and laughing at the same time. We had to put him back in the crib. He must have been at most one year old. We put the bars back, but he knew which ones they were. We braced the playpen against the corner so the walls would stop him from getting out. Every once in a while someone would say, Han visto a Juanpi? and the whole family would mobilize trying to find him. We would find the playpen pushed away from the wall and it was empty. We would finally find him. Even at that age nunca se quedaba tranquilo. Once he was under a table. Another time he was under a bed. I think we were finally able to fix the playpen somehow.

We left Cuba and had to go to Spain to then go to Miami. While in Spain papi would walk around the neighborhood we were in and we would see shops which had meats hanging from the roof. I would ask papi…papi que es eso…. Mijo eso es jamon…I would point out another one and he would say ..mijo eso es mortadella. Once we arrived in Miami and got to the airport everyone was there. Some of these family members I had only seen in pictures. They all knew me. Tio Lulo greeted me with ..berraco.. ( I do not know what that means but I take it as an affectionate term) There were lots of hugs etc.. Heriber, one of my cousins, was the nicest. He took me to a coin operated machine. This thing was huge. He put money into it……. I was so excited…... Can you imagine what was coming out of the machine. This is the land of self cooling Coca colas. Where you could take a pacifier and try to hit the floor and it would not get there. Where clothes would clean themselves. I could not wait. My mind was expecting to be totally blown away. After the machine went through all the gyrations, Heriber gave me a plastic dinosaur. It was hot!!. I burned myself…. Later my cousin Silvia offered me some gum. I took the stick and broke off a piece and gave it back to her… She told me I could keep it. WOW…. Silvia took another piece of gum, and put the whole thing it her mouth. WOW!!!!!!…………..I like to be in America…