# The Only Cuba I've Ever Known > A personal story about Cuban family traditions and the search for identity through the holidays in Miami. This is the Cuba we remember, far from the island. - URL: https://langandtrip.com.ua/en/article/edynstvennaia-kuba-kotoruiu-ia-znaiu/ - Language: en - Published: 2025-03-29 - Categories: Culture, Leisure, Restaurants, Cuba, Food & Drinks, Parties --- This holiday season I'm heading to the only Cuba I've ever known. To *Nochebuena* dinner with my cousin's roast pork, my aunt's flan, platanos maduros, yuca, and salad. *Nochebuena* is the Latin American celebration of Christmas Eve, and it's a big night for us. There will be rapid-fire Spanish, varying degrees of English, and the kind of jokes I've only ever heard from my Cuban relatives as they trade quips back and forth. Plenty of gifts will be unwrapped, and everyone will act as though we all gave one another the perfect present. I won't be going to Havana but to Miami, where my grandparents and other relatives arrived years after Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, once it became clear that no one but him would have freedom of speech. Stadiums filled up with "trials" of the state's opponents, friends disappeared, and my mother, despite her government job, knew that her refusal to stay silent while people suffered would land her in trouble. So she went into exile in 1961 and never returned. Years later my grandparents followed their grown children, my mother and my uncle, to the United States. When they applied to leave the country, Cuban government officials took an inventory of everything in their home. Both the house and all their belongings were to be confiscated by the state on the day they left. On the morning she was leaving, my *abuelita* was washing dishes in their apartment before she and my grandfather set off for the airport. Suddenly she stopped. "Let Fidel wash the dishes," she said. I never saw that apartment. ## Family Traditions When we land on Tuesday in Miami, my mother and my uncle will meet us at the airport and rush us off to Havana Harry's or some cafe where I can get real Cuban coffee, none of that Starbucks nonsense. There's a hint of Cuba in that taste. And Cuban and American flags will be everywhere. I don't care about South Beach, or Art Basel, or Coconut Grove. Every piece of Cuba I get comes from photographs, from music, from the stories people tell me, and from these trips to visit family in Miami, where I catch glimpses of my heritage in the food, the jokes, and the gifts. I soak it all in on every visit. I've never seen the sleepy farming town of Pinar del Rio, where my mother was born and lived until her teens. I've never seen where she went to high school after they moved to Havana, or the beaches where she swam in the summers, where one friend, dangling a leg off the pier, lost it to a shark. I don't know where she gave her first piano recital. When she plays my favorite Cuban music on the piano, all too rarely, something about those notes brings me to tears. Maybe they're glimpses of her life before me. Christmas heat in Miami must feel a lot like Cuba, only a short flight to the south. I'll pack summer clothes and a swimsuit for my daughter. Around midday on Christmas Eve, some of us will head to El Palacio de Los Jugos for lunch and Cuban sandwiches. I'll grab my favorite Materva soda, too sweet for me now but still worth the memory. My cousin, whose *Nochebuena* pork would make Martha Stewart weep, loves to tease us not to fill up at lunch. But we'll be fine. Dinner won't happen until much later, our family is always running late, and every one of us wants her cooking. ## Filling In the Gaps My idea of beauty isn't blond hair or blue eyes or some classic American stereotype. It's my dark-haired Cuban cousins, who look so poised and elegant. They hug me, the youngest of my generation and the half-American one with chestnut hair, so tightly. They remind me to come back. To Miami, not to Cuba. I've only ever seen photographs of the tobacco trucks. My mother was taught to drive by the drivers of the tobacco transport company where my grandfather worked, which is why she still drives like she has somewhere to be. Another hint of Cuba on those long road trips. I welcome the news of a thaw in American relations with Cuba and the easing of travel restrictions. But I'm tired of the ads for religious charity trips to Cuba and all-inclusive resorts where tourists are pampered while my people, just one generation removed, depend on charity for the most basic medical supplies. I'm tired of the reasons for the sadness in my older relatives' eyes. I don't want to hear any more stereotypes about who my people are, or tourists talking about going to Cuba "before it changes." I don't want to hear about your Cuban vacation. I just want to buy a plane ticket and go there myself. I want to visit my mother's hometown and see where she was born without crying the whole way. I want to piece these glimpses together, fill in the gaps, and see for the first time where I come from.