Minnesota and January into another February. Memories of being somewhere warmer but back there so far it’s more of a mirage than anything else.
Big house on the coast near Havana, a dining table so long it looked to be slipping into the sea and maid after maid. Father an attorney downtown and a mother that party planned when she wasn’t sipping her way through another pitcher of daiquiris.
But better. America never home. Home for husbands and children but not for oneself. No, snow and ice with lines on telephone poles where it came up to so high even the tall gentleman who lives down the street has to jump as high as he can to touch it.
But one day. Out in that tiny boat when the revolution came and mother clung to all the way to Florida.
Two albums filled with pictures that were under the seat and nothing more . . . dinner party for one of the ambassadors . . . only a mayoress now and a table by the window but the rest only a dream anyway . . . doesn’t really matter that it was all real . . .
