My mother just left. She’s back in Miami, 900 miles away, and I am never sure when she’s coming back. I never know when my parents are coming back. I also never know how long they are staying when they are here — a Cuban thing, perhaps, that confounds non-Latino, American friends. “How long are […]

Discovering my Swedes and Scots Swen and Ingegorg met sometime in the early 1600s, perhaps not too far from Aspeboda, Sweden, where they were born. Ancestry.com tells me they are my 10th-great-grandparents. Stay with me, through a brief history of my non-Cuban-ness. It’s quick-ish. It leads to questions about identity, often discussed here. So, Swen […]

  It is no easy thing to reject the heart of what one’s own family, and people, preaches. Particularly, perhaps, if you are Cuban-American. (If you know Cubans, this needs no further explanation.) But, it appears that, at the risk of being called communist, socialist, estúpido and comemierda, an historic percentage of my generation, combined with […]

I am 900 miles from my brother, aunts, uncles, cousins and dear friends who have survived Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey and New York. Actually, people I love are all up and down the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast — from the Carolinas to New England. Everyone is physically fine. To say I feel helpless in the […]

  Sometimes, I have nothing to say, which is very un-Cuban. Sometimes, I force myself to say nothing, which is very American. I have been fighting with the two sides of my brain:  Shut up…or just say it? On what? The Disgusting Nature of this Election. Well, yes. But, I am only 47% ready on […]

Ah lawdy, lawd, dios mio. Forgive me, but I secretly recorded my daughter and her friend. (There’s an app for that,) I had to. The conversation was just too funny and rich and it showed me all too boldly that my daughter is a cubana en la sangre, for she is fascinated by symbols and […]

I don’t go anywhere now without first checking my chin. There are tweezers everywhere — in my kitchen, in my car, in my makeup bag, in my bathroom drawer. Ya tu sabes. Less than a month before 45, I find myself wondering how in the hell this happened. I know it is not an original […]

The Case for Play I don’t remember how long ago, maybe a decade, maybe more. A German tourist stopped me on Broadway, just outside the paper and asked for directions. We got to chatting. I asked her how she liked Nashville. Loved it, she said. She went on about the country music and how nice […]

Two things have been happening in our lives for several months and I just realized that one has been a metaphor for the other. It took my dreaming of an overflowing toilet a few days ago to link the two. So, our toilets started backing up this winter. The plumber told us it was time […]

Am I Really Bilingual? I think this is an open letter to parents raising bilingual, Spanish-speaking children in America. For parents, like me, whose kids are speaking and reading English at school and hablando un poco de español at home. I have had a realization. A thunderbolt to the cabeza. A “guau” moment about my […]