This is a picture of my grandfather, grandmother, and mother. In The Family She Never Met there is mention of how Lara’s grandparents were the ones who watched the children when Carmen and her husband had to flee Cuba. It was my maternal grandparents who took care of my sister and me when my parents had to leave Cuba. It took nearly a year for us to be able to escape, but we weren’t able to come directly to the United States because of the immigration policies at that time. Because of that, we bounced around from Mexico to Nicaragua, where we had very distant family.
Unfortunately, our Nicaraguan family wasn’t able to keep us for long and we made a trek back to Mexico to wait for an opportunity to legally enter the U.S. Once we were in the U.S., my grandparents continued to live with us and take care of us since both my parents were working.
They were an amazing influence in my life, and I loved hearing stories of their lives in both Cuba and Spain, where they were born. It’s thanks to them, especially my grandmother, that some of our family’s stories about leaving Cuba were saved since my mother rarely talked about our time in Cuba.
