Living Life

We all have that one dish that reminds us of home or of a person who has impacted us in a such a big way it has made us who we are. Something that takes us back to our roots and connects us to who we are. Food is so much more than just something that we ingest to keep us alive and well. For me, growing up with a Cuban background, food was always something that was important to my identity. It affected not only myself but my family as well. The way that we viewed culture and family was greatly affected by the food that we had at the dinner table. Food had more of an affect on who I was than I ever thought that it would. It helped me to understand who I was as a person and to be proud of the culture that I am a descendant of. Most importantly it was a way for me to connect with those that I hold to be very important in my life. My Abuela was the one who first sparked my love for cooking and, at the very beginning of my life, the culture that I came from. I never realized just how much this was a part of me until i no longer was able to talk to abuela. Cancer took her too soon and being young and naive I never knew just what I was giving up, and what I would never be able to get back.

    The first memories that I ever have are in the kitchen with my Abuela. She was the one who first taught me how to cook. There were so many different foods that we cooked together in her kitchen. Everything from fried plantains and yucca to carne con papa. I learned to love the food and all of the flavors that came with it. From the first bite that I took I could just feel my taste buds jumping for joy. Every bite was bursting with flavor and those flavors would be the only thing that would consume your mind. Every other worry in the world would just disappear. The meat she cooked was always so soft and spices filled the air. If you could think of the most amazing spanish restaurant that you have ever been to, and then imagine something even better, that’s what the kitchen always smelled like. It would seep into the other rooms and would put a trance on anyone who was in the house to come to the kitchen.  My Abuela’s kitchen was very run down. The appliances were old and the floor was a white tile covered in a pattern of black and brown specks. It was the heart of the house. It was where we always spent the most time whenever we were visiting and was the place where we made the most memories. There was so much more that came with the food though. During the times that we were cooking she would tell me about her time in Cuba, all the way from when she was a little girl all the way to when she immigrated to the United States. She talked about all of the different people that were in Cuba and the culture that she left behind to move to a country where her family would have a better life. All of the hardships that she endured, not only in Cuba, but also in the United States. The kitchen became the place to be, and when you weren’t there it was where you wanted to be. Within those four walls I learned many lessons from my Abuela, and learned many things about myself because of her. It was here that I learned to be inspired and unafraid at a young age, but over time the less that we went to Miami the more I forgot about that lesson and that person I had become. Overtime I came to learn different lessons that made change who I was and who I wanted to be . I never knew the type of hardships that my abuela experienced, but I would come to be exposed to my own hardships and dealing with what exactly it meant to be hispanic in the United States.

    Coming from a military family we didn’t get to spend a lot of time in Miami with our family because of the fact that we were always living so far away due to my father’s job. My parents still wanted to instill this culture within us and the best way to continue to educate us on that with hands on exposure was through food. We had so many different types of Cuban food and when we were younger I loved having all of my friends over and showing them the culture that I came from. That was until I had some people over for a sleepover on my birthday one year and dinner took a turn for the worst. My mom had made ox tail for dinner, but many of my friends, once they knew what it was were disgusted by what we were eating. After that night many people at school heard about what we ate and began making fun of me. It didn’t just stop at the food though, people began making fun of where I came from and where my family came from. The usual jokes that all kids in middle schoolers make. The banana boat jokes were endless. Kids would always ask if I left my banana boat at home when we would go to the lake. One specific time that I remember kids made fun of me was during the swim lesson portion in gym class. They would always ask me why I needed to be apart of that lesson because I already knew how to swim really well because I swam from Cuba to Florida when I was younger. These may not seem like major insults, but in middle school when everyone is worried about their reputation and their appearance, I felt as though the universe was just trying to make me miserable. The constant ridicule of being from a different culture never ended. We did live in upstate New York after all and there weren’t many people who didn’t identify as just being the average white American person. I was twelve years old and I hated going to school. I never wanted to go because I was ashamed of who I was. I stopped talking to my grandmother and I stopped talking to extended family, because in my mind they were the ones that were to blame. Looking back on it I know that it wasn’t because of them, but I was young and naive. I didn’t know that there were so many reasons that I should be proud of the culture that I came from.

    As I got older and time went on I stopped classifying myself with the hispanic culture that I descended from. I started to tell people I was white. I started to act white. I stopped speaking Spanish regularly with my family. I stopped eating all of the foods that were the foods that I adored and grew up on. When people asked me if I was mixed with some different type of ethnicity I would just say no. I kept telling myself that I was white. I started saying that my favorite food was peanut butter and banana sandwiches with potato chips. I pretended to love pasta, even though I hated it. I stopped going to Miami and seeing family. I stopped being proud of coming from a cuban family. I eventually moved to a new state and started in a new school, and I became the new white girl from New York, not the new hispanic girl from Miami. I fit in with the crowd and I didn’t make myself known. I hid the fact that I was fluent in spanish from all of my peers and placed myself in spanish classes that were were from so easy for me, in order to fit in and seem like I was everyone else. There were so many aspects that I tried to change about the person that I was but I never realized how important it was until I lost my abuela. I didn’t know that my outlook on who I was and the culture that I came from would change with just one phone call that would take away the time that I had let slip by easily.

    Cancer. The word that always changes everyone’s world. This time it was changing mine. My grandmother was diagnosed with stage three lung cancer and I didn’t know it at the time but we didn’t have much time left with her. I travelled more with my mother down to Miami to visit my grandmother and I watched her deteriorate right before my eyes. She tried so hard to make things the way they were when I was little. She tried to cook with me. To make all of the amazing foods that I used to love when I was younger. She was just so happy that I was back and I was trying to embrace my cultural roots like I use to when I was younger and was proud of where I came from. I felt at home again within this atmosphere and I just wanted to make her happy so I tried my best to embrace my culture around her. I saw how happy it made her and during that time smiles were rare in her house. It made her happy, but the more that I went down the more that I saw her body deteriorating, and there was nothing that I, or anyone in my family could do to stop it. As time went on our time got shorter together, and there wasn’t much more that we could do, as the two who use to be partners in crime. Then one day she was there, and the next day she wasn’t. I didn’t cry. I felt sad, but over anything else, I also felt guilty. Guilty that I lost time with her being so ashamed of who I was. Feeling guilty over the fact that I was ashamed and angry of her. Guilty that I didn’t let her teach me all about the culture and share that part of herself with me. I let what others had to say about who I was have an effect on what I wanted the world to see. I didn’t know how valuable time really was, and unfortunately I had to learn that lesson the hard way.

    Losing someone isn’t ever easy, but losing my Abuela was the hardest loss that I have ever had to deal with because I had to come to terms with the guilt that came with losing her. I have had to come to terms with the fact that I will never be able to learn more about my culture and where I come from because she is gone and never coming back. I felt like i let her down. When she was first gone, I felt as though she would be ashamed of the person that I had become. Someone who didn’t even have the guts to tell others the truth about where I was truly from and a major part of my life that made me who I was. I had to stop living in fear of what other people would think of me and what they would think of the culture that I come from. I had to start living with a sense of pride and stop hiding who I truly was all because I wanted to fit in with the crowd. Fitting in with the crowd is overrated and being who I really am is what really mattered at the end of the day. The guilt doesn’t ever go away, but it gets easier to deal with. After my Abuela past away I promised to myself that I would never allow myself to lose touch with my culture and waste anymore time trying to fit in. My Hispanic culture is something that is a part of me and makes me who I am and trying to forget that does nothing but hurt me. I now try to deal with this guilt by doing everything in my power to not only learn about my own culture, but to learn about other cultures as well. I talk to family about what life was like growing up with my Abuela, or asking my family about their favorite memory with her. I visit Miami as often as I can and spend as much time with older relatives who help me to accept the culture that I am apart of.

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