Tchotchkes and pictures

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I spent the better part of today packing and repacking all the items we’re taking for family on this trip of a lifetime to Cuba. A trip a lifetime in the waiting. I can wait one more day. Tomorrow we’ll review the inventory again. Sturdy clothes for aunts and uncles and cousins. Check. Medicines. Check. Dietary supplements and vitamins. Check. These are the things on our minds as we get close to departure.

Most people don’t know that this is a humanitarian effort on top of a joyful reunion and possibilities of adventure.

While I wait, well-meaning folks make comments about seeing antique cars. I stop myself from pointing out those aren’t collectibles– they are modes of transportation that necessity and ingenuity have kept around, and have only accidentally become a strangely alluring cottage industry for those smart enough and lucky enough to have the resources to restore them for sale.

I wonder at how this image has somehow become a snapshot of a country, and feel driven to find a new image, a more fitting image that matches the stories I’ve heard and goes with the fading black and white pictures dotting the walls in my father’s office.

I suspect the truth is somewhere between the romantic nostalgia of my father’s generation and the gritty reality of hasty clean up projects in order to present a certain image to the world over the next several days. My uncle, my father’s younger brother, sensed I’m curious about this. Between stories about his own return in the last decade, and recommendations to look for certain things in secret hiding places in the house where he was born, he offered me one simple piece of advice: talk to people. Talk to everybody you meet. And listen.

Yes.