Silent Night

All is calm. All is bright. (Though there isn’t a single round yon virgin in sight. Or even a virgin, for that matter.) As I sit in the post-Christmas quiet, the ringing in my ears is just beginning to fade.

Everyone is sleeping. Which means no one is screaming. In the morning, the silence will surrender to the screaming all over again.

Within five minutes of the arrival of my family, I was reminded that the Cuban baseline volume level is several decibels (and octaves) above the Gringo baseline volume that I have apparently grown accustomed to. The Cuban volume dial doesn’t stop at 10. Seriously.

It’s a remarkable phenomenon, really. Whether someone wants to watch a movie and needs to know where the remote control is, or whether someone’s just accidentally chopped their forearm off in the kitchen while preparing dinner, it all sounds the same. It’s enough to maintain a persistent state of tachycardia.

But I love it. This is my family. Locos que son. They are mine. It’s been a good Christmas. Cardiac arrhythmia provoking, but good.

Cada cinco minutos...

Every five minutes, Abuelito needs something...

"OYE, CULONA, NECESITO UNA TOALLA.” Towel.

“OYE MAMACUSA…DONDE ENCUENTRO UN TENEDOR?” Fork.

“AGUA?” Water.

“CULONA, COMO ENCIENDO EL TELEVISOR?” Television.

“MAMACUSA, TENGO QUE TOMAR LAS MEDICINAS!!” Medications.

“CULONA…UN PEDASITO DE PAPEL POR FAVOR.” Paper.

“MAMACUSAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!……….”

Mamacusa looks at me, nerves frayed. Then screams back at him, “Que Papi?”

“NADA…solamente para decirte que no te necesito en este momento!” Nothing, just wanted to tell you that I don’t need you at this exact moment!

If he weren't 81, she might have bitch slapped him. Instead we just giggled.

Christmas crack

“Oye, Culona, check out my back, I think there’s a cyst or something back there I need your opinion on.” My Abuelito, El Exagerado, stood before me, fresh out of the shower, smelling like a rose. (Literally. He used my favorite rose soap.) He was wearing a long t-shirt and, one would assume, some underwear. “Mira, chica!” he insisted as he turned his back to me to facilitate the examination.

I leaned down and lifted up the bottom of his shirt. Nothing but bare, 81-year-old ass crack staring back at me.

El Exagerado, pleased with himself, erupted into a hearty laugh.

Sheesh. What an amateur my grandfather is! If it were my brother that’d done that, he would have topped it off with a fart to my face.

That’s right, the family is here for the holidays. Let the merry making begin!

Tis the season...

...to be jolly. Except, given the subject of the last two posts, one would well know I was headed for anything but jolly. I was doing quite well in the sad department. And for the first time in my life, checking a bit into the bah humbug department. If I’d heard another Bing Crosby song about roasting chestnuts…surely there would have been a roast. But not of chestnuts.

So the last place I thought I’d willingly find myself yesterday morning was amongst the throngs of frantic holiday shoppers in Union Square…with Bing Crosby’s roasting chestnuts wafting out from every storefront. But, I did, indeed go. Willingly. Happily, actually. (So needless to say, noone’s chestnuts got roasted, and noone got elbowed or sworn at, even. Bravo, me.) Since I last wrote, contact information for my family in Cuba has materialized, so having my friend deliver a package to them while down there for her vacation is suddenly a realistic goal again. And money is going to be a very big part of that. Hence needing to go to the branch of my bank in Union Square, the only one with an international currency exchange.

Money, medications, pictures of all of us together during my July visit, and some nice chocolates went into a little Christmas package…and my dear friend graciously took it from me midday yesterday.

I am jolly at the prospect of that making it to them.

So jolly that I think I’ll refrain from leaving the “ñ” out of the word “Año” in my Christmas greetings to a few choice assholes that I obligatorily send cards to every year. Instead I shall write it properly…

Feliz Navidad y Feliz Año Nuevo a todos.*

* 'Año' without the ñ = 'Ano.' And 'Ano' means 'anus,' or, as I like to more appropriately put it: 'asshole.' But in the spirit of Christmas, I’ll be nice even to them. (Again, bravo me.)

To Cuba with love...(part 2)

I signaled to Dochechka and The Brit to join me inside Tia’s house. Then, without waiting for them, I stepped into the darkness behind her door. My eyes readjusted and I saw that there were two others just inside: Prima, my Tia’s niece (my Mamacusa’s cousin) and Prima’s husband, El Barrigon. We all congregated, awkwardly, in the center of the house’s front room, which was slowly registering on my retinas. Aged marble tiled floor with several missing tiles. Dingy walls. Antique, formerly beautiful furniture curiously pushed off to one cramped corner. Piles of 2 X 4’s in an opposite corner. Dust that evidenced a room never used except to simply enter and exit. I couldn’t figure out why, and it must have been written on my face as El Barrigon pointed up and began to explain. The ceiling had given way one day, and the contents of the room upstairs, complete with neighbor and all, had fallen through. That event took place about a decade prior. Suffice it to say, the use of their front room ceased then and there.

We were invited to pass through into the “livable” part of the house. Just beyond the front room, the harsh midday sun poured in from the centrally located patio and exposed the rest of the house. The layout was typical of a Spanish-style home: high ceilings, crown moldings, multiple rooms, all of which connected to the central patio. In it’s day, it must have been beautiful. But the years had cracked the moldings, browned the walls, warped and shifted the floor, aged the furniture, chipped the porcelain figurines and apparently, collapsed the ceilings. Whatever space was not otherwise occupied with a Virgin Mary statue or a cross was filled, instead, with pictures and trivial trinkets…odes and shrines to a better time. The time before the revolution. Everything here in Cuba seemed to be referenced with a “before” or “after.” And anything from the time of before was framed, hung up on the wall, and cherished.

We passed through Tia’s room to Prima’s room to the dining room where a young man, about my age, sat. Prima and El Barrigon’s son: El Curioso. He looked at me with an unexpected recognition, immediately stood up and hugged me politely. I started to explain who I was and he nodded, saying, “Si, si…la hija de Mamacusa!” He knew who I was. From pictures. There were piles of them. He led me to the stacks of photos on the worn dining room table, in the drawers of the tired china cabinet, on the shelves of the overflowing bookshelves. There, chronicled in those photos, was the American chapter of our family’s story…for those of us who “got out” before it became impossible to leave. They’d been here all along, within the walls of this aging, collapsing house, bearing witness from afar to my first steps, my childhood ballet recitals, my awful fluffy-haired high school days, my med school graduation. My moments had been their moments. They knew me. They knew my aunts and uncles and their children, my cousins. It was just too overwhelming to take in all at once.

Frankly, the entire visit was an onslaught of overwhelming. Just moments prior, on the other side of door, these people were just characters in my grandfather’s tales. Characters whose lives, admittedly, I knew little to nothing about. What I learned that day over hours of talking, laughing, crying…truly changed my world. Changed my identity.

I sat down opposite my Tia, who beamed back at me with a smile that was uncannily familiar, and we stayed up til nearly 2 am disturbing everyone’s sleep with our chatter. She wanted to know about everyone. So I filled her in. The weddings, the kids, the achievements. The death of her sister three years prior. I’d been the one to explain to my grandmother her diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. I’d been there when she decided to go home to die rather than stay in the hospital. She’d spent her last days in her own bed, surrounded by family, blissfully in and out of the delirium of renal failure. She’d slipped away painlessly. Tia was comforted to learn this. She hadn’t been permitted to leave the country to go to her sister’s funeral.

Before El Curioso had turned in for the night, he’d chimed in with a stream of questions about the world and the US. What are the states like? Is there really a difference in culture between the east and the west coasts. What do we think of our president? Does everyone love Madonna as much as they did here? Funny, the People magazine that Dochechka had purchased for the plane ride had a few pictures of Madonna. We brought it out and handed it to him. Wide-eyed, he gleefully accepted it and spent the next few hours studying the pages and then studying them again.

They don’t get People magazine in Cuba. Among a few other things. Things like: The internet. Consistent power and water. Beef. Chicken. Toilet paper. Ownership of their house. Rights to form associations or accumulate wealth. (Whether one is a doctor or a gas station attendant, the monthly salary is the same: the equivalent of $20.) The privilege to stay in any of the country’s hotels. (Not that they have the financial means to stay in one anyway.) Free speech. A choice in whether or not to swallow the force-fed propaganda. (There is no avoiding it, as if it isn’t on one of the three television stations, it’s printed on the cover of the sole newspaper, or broadcast on one of the two radio stations.) A way to leave the island other than to marry a non-American foreigner or take to the water.

Viva el socialismo! With its free education…if one wants to call history as written by Fidel “education.” Free health care…if one wants to call no access to basic medications and treatments “health care.” Rationed food…if one wants to call the mealy bread and the abysmally limited ration of beans, rice, and vegetables “food.”

This is life in Cuba. Why anyone, if given the chance to escape, would come back to this voluntarily is beyond me. And yet that is exactly what Tia did. In the early 90’s, she’d been given a rare traveler’s visa to see her sister in Florida. She stayed for 6 weeks. Soaked in the liberty. Fattened herself on the seemingly endless amount of fresh food. Talked shit about Fidel in more than just a whisper without looking over her shoulder. Laughed because there were things that were actually funny, not because things were so miserable that she would cry if she didn’t find something to laugh about. It was all there, documented in the stack of pictures. Why didn’t she just stay? Claim political asylum like all the rest? Why on earth did she come back? When I asked her this she looked at me square in the face with a resolution I recognized. Then, with her wiry, malnutritioned finger, she quietly pointed to Prima, who now laid fast asleep on her sagging mattress next to El Barrigon. Then she pointed to El Curioso, also sleeping. Familia.

I looked at her frail, cachectic frame, at the fire behind those sunken eyes, and in the night time silence of her cramped and crumbling house on this prison of an island, I saw her for the angel that she is.

Or rather. The angel that she was. In this life.

When I first started writing this yesterday, I thought it was going to be a story with a somewhat happy ending. A fellow surgical resident and good friend of mine had just decided to go to Cuba for vacation at the end of this month and she’d graciously asked me if I wanted her to hand carry the package I’d been trying to send to Tia since I’d returned. I’d tried first, in my ignorance, to mail the package (laden with laxatives and vitamins for Tia, anti-inflammatory pain medication for Prima’s arthritis, pictures from our visit, a few new shirts for El Curioso, and money [hidden within a double layered envelope that I convincingly hand crafted to try and evade the Cuban government inspectors that would invariably search the package]) from the US. I learned that sending anything other than books was not allowed. Then I tried from Mexico. The post office advised against it at the time because for some reason, all mail sent to Cuba recently was being returned. Then I tried from Canada. It left without a hitch from the post office…only to return a week later with a notice of having violated the 2kg maximum weight restriction for packages. Finally! The package would make it. And now that it was going by hand, I could include more money. And maybe even a few silly, trivial Christmas presents.

But this evening, I received word, through neighbors with a phone who called Tia’s only living sibling in the states, my grandmother’s brother, that Tia passed away this morning. It’s unclear the cause. But one thing that is clear is that the government has wasted no time in reclaiming the home that had been assigned to Tia for her use. A house that Tia has lived in for decades. Now that she is no longer breathing within its walls, it belongs once again to the government and Prima, El Barrigon, and El Curioso need to vacate the house. Through our weak and inconsistent lines of communication, I’ve learned they plan to go to Havana. But where in Havana? Now I’ll have no way of knowing how to get anything to them.

In all of my adult life, I’ve never known a pain like that of having to leave Tia and the rest of them in that house this past July with little more than a stack of money and a People magazine. It wasn’t even a comfort to know that the money amounted to half a year’s salary for one of them. I wanted so badly to bring them back with me. To pack their starved bodies into our suitcases and stow them on our plane. But instead, I had to hug them goodbye, which I did tearfully and repeatedly, and get back into the rental car to leave. Truly the hardest thing I’ve ever had to talk myself into doing. Truly the most pain I’ve ever felt.

This is no less painful.

My only comfort is the idea that for one of them, things are better now. My angel Tia deserves it.

To Cuba with love...(part 1)

When I think of my seventy-seven year old great aunt, my Tia, I picture the smallness of her life and feel, with unwavering certainty, that she has been cheated. A woman with a spirit as large as hers shouldn’t have been caged as she has been. The confines of her existence have been determined not so much by any bodily pain her untreated gallstones, incisional hernia, or her fractured hip ever caused her but more by the simple fact of her geographical location.

Cuba. Before July, all I knew of it was what years of my grandfather’s seemingly bloated, biased and impassioned stories had deposited in the recesses of my mind. It was a place of opulence and unimaginable beauty, where movie stars from the world over would vacation, where the best cigars on earth were made, and where my entire family is from. Once upon a time. Now, as of 1959, it was a place decaying from the inside out thanks to one individual: Fidel. No matter how my grandfather’s stories about Cuba start out, they always end with that simple conclusion.

I decided I had to see it for myself. So, in July, The Brit, Dochechka and I went. Cuba, a mere 90 miles south of Florida….and yet, ideologically and politically, worlds and ages apart. Communism and an embargo have widened the divide from 90 miles to an infinite expanse of shark-filled waters. I felt somewhat guilty flying in…knowing that I’d be able to just fly right back out…and leave when I’d had enough. Leave, as my mom, dad, aunts, uncles, and grandparents did in the early sixties. But I felt that it was important for me to see the stories in real life.

I was surprised to discover for myself that my grandfather, the great exaggerator, had not exaggerated. It was beautiful. If one looked past the collapsing Spanish colonial architecture, the peeling paint, the filth, the beggars…one could imagine unparalleled beauty. Long ago. But now, indeed, it was decaying. Decaying as anything would if left for decades without a single day of maintenance. And that was just Havana.

In Matanzas, on first impression, it seemed slightly better. As we roamed the numbered, nameless streets for Tirrey entre Calle San Juan Bautista and Calle San Francisco (the street names my mother had given me), I felt hopeful that maybe my Tia’s house wasn’t in as bad a shape as some of the Havana homes. Also, I grew increasingly and somewhat nervously hopeful that she wouldn’t mind an unannounced visit from an American relative who she’d never met before. She didn’t have a phone. So there was no way to inform her of our visit beforehand.

After finally encountering a gentleman old enough to remember the names of the streets before they were numbered, I found her door. One unremarkable door in a line of many tall, narrow doors…all with peeling paint and tired knockers. I raised my hand to knock and paused, heart in throat, suddenly confronted with the idea that I was connected with the stranger on the other side of the door. It was a surreal feeling. And it seated itself in my churning stomach. I looked behind me to my right at the government bakery just at the corner and realized everyone inside was looking at me. A pasty white girl with a newly acquired sunburn, clearly not from around here, about to knock on la viejita’s door. I turned my back to them and knocked, sheepishly. No answer. I looked back at The Brit and Dochechka, both waiting in the rental car, and shrugged nervously. I knocked again. Nothing. A little harder. Still nothing. The nervous churning in my stomach gave way to disappointment. I couldn’t believe I’d come all this way and she wasn’t home...

I stepped over to her neighbor’s door, which was propped open and knocked there. A shirtless, weathered old man appeared from behind a sagging wall and looked at me quizzically. I pointed in the direction of my Tia’s house and asked, in Spanish, if she did, in fact, live there and if he knew where she might be right now.

He looked at me and asked, “Familia?” I nodded yes.

He smiled, “Americana?” Yes. We exchanged smiles as he told me that la viejita (the old lady) was home, but that she was very hard of hearing, so I just needed to knock harder.

And so I did. I put all my effort into it. And waited. I looked over at her neighbor who waited outside his door, reassuring me that she’d come. Just give her time. Minutes went by. Then, finally, I heard a weak voice from behind the door, “Quien es?” Who is it, she asked.

“La hija de Mamacusa.” The daughter of Mamacusa, I said into the crack of the door.

The door slowly opened, and for a moment, all I saw was darkness. I heard her voice say, comically, “Bueno, quien en el carajo es Mamacusa?” Well, who the fuck is Mamacusa? Yep, with a mouth like that, she was definitely family.

Then she stepped into the sunlight. I was immediately taken aback. For a moment, it was as if my late grandmother had stepped out from behind the door. A skinnier, more fragile looking version of my grandmother, but a striking resemblance nonetheless.

I fumbled, as I stared at her with a growing lump in my throat, for the words to describe that my mother is her dead sister’s daughter, “Mamacusa es la hija de tu hermana.”

She looked at me more closely, curiously, then connected the dots of relation a second later. Tears. Hugs. Smiles and exclamations of disbelief. And an insistent invitation to come inside…

(to be continued…)

Gluttony and Charity

Like Ebony and Ivory. Who knew they could go together so well?

Despite the Muppet show at the airport on Saturday, I did manage to make it back to SF in time for the Dessert and Wine Party that The Brit, our roommates, and I hosted at our house. (Or should I say…I made it back to SF in time to be the maid of honor in that wedding…wink, wink.) I even had time to throw together my famous Cuban flan (for…errr…the wedding reception of course)! A fabulous time was had by all. Hoards of people came to partake of the desserts that The Brit crafted over the course of the week (his dessert-making skill is one of the reasons I date him…he had me when he made Winter-Spiced Molten Chocolate Cakes two years ago). [See below for list of desserts and links to their recipes.] Also, I am happy to report, this year’s party did not go without the holiday tradition of at least ONE couple banging each other senseless in our Christmas-candle lit guest bathroom while a bunch of “innocent bystanders” waiting for the bathroom stood less-than-discretely by the door to listen. Yes. A good time was had by all indeed.

What’s more, we started a new holiday tradition: collecting “suggested donations” at the door for a charity. This year’s charity, Habitat for Humanity. With all the people that came, most of whom gave happily (some of whom we had to beat senseless and then feed mercilessly), we managed to raise $723.00. We like our friends. I think Habitat will like them too. Good job all!

Dont’cha wish your boyfriend cooked HOT like this…

Chocolate Caramel Walnut Torte
Frozen Grand Marnier Torte
Poached Pear Tart with Caramelized Pistachios
Toffee Crunch Caramel Cheesecake
Orange Blossom Cheesecake with Raspberry & Pomegranate Sauce
Raspberry, White Chocolate & Almond Trifle
Pistachio Crème Brulee with Sour Cherry Sauce
Strawberry Baked Alaska
Spiced Chocolate Torte wrapped with Chocolate Ribbons
Chocolate Peppermint Ice Cream Cake
Cuban Flan (If I told you the secret recipe, I’d be forced to destroy you.)