What If?

Recently I had lunch at a restaurant in Miami with four of my former classmates from Colegio de las Ursulinas, That is the school I attended in Havana starting in “Pre-primario”, a grade between Kindergarten and first grade, until the first year of “Secundaria Básica,” the equivalent of seventh grade. Some of us had become friends at age six, and attended school together until we turned thirteen.

Four of us, Ofelia, Gilda, Silvia and I, currently reside in South Florida. Teresita resides in New Jersey, and was visiting in Miami for a week. We had not seen her since our school days in Cuba. Of the five of us, Teresita was the one who arrived in the United States from Cuba the latest – in 1994.  The rest of us left Cuba during the first years of the ill-fated Revolution.

A little over a year ago Teresita sent me an e-mail – her daughter had been searching for her Mom’s schoolmates in the internet, and managed to find me. What a joy and a surprise to hear Teresita’s voice then and during subsequent phone conversations. What a greater joy to finally meet her in person again – 52 years later.

As our conversation turned to our lives after we left the island, each trying to cram more than 50 years worth of experiences  into a few short hours, our friend Silvia suggested that each one of us write what we think our lives would have been if there had been no Revolution. A school teacher by profession, turning the restaurant where we were sharing a lunch of croquetas, plantains, rice, black beans and other Cuban fare, into a classroom, Silvia challenged us to get paper and pen and write about “What If?”  Write it when you are home, she said, and let’s compare notes by e-mail afterwards.

I generally do not like to think about how things could have turned out differently. Silvia’s question, however, has been resonating in my mind. It has led me to indulge in imagining how things could have been, for me, if life in Cuba had not been disrupted to the core on January 1, 1959.

During the years just before the Revolution, my life pretty much was centered on my family, my friends, and school.  In school I was involved in the “Acción Católica” (Catholic Action) children’s groups.  At home I was the youngest child and the only girl. My brothers Carlos and Javier had graduated from Colegio de Belén, the largest Catholic  school in the island, and Alejandro was attending “Bachillerato” there.  Carlos was already married, was a teacher at Belén, and attended the University of Havana whenever it was in session (most of the time it was closed due to the political unrest.) My brother Javier attended the University of Villanueva.

I imagine that I would have graduated “Bachillerato” at Colegio Ursulinas and, following on the footsteps of my brothers, and of both my parents before them, I would have continued to study at the University of Havana, or perhaps Villanueva. Since we lived within walking distance of Belén, I imagine I would have married a boy from Belén, most likely a boy from my brother Alejandro’s class. I imagine myself as also continuing in the Catholic Action groups, moving on into the university student group, and eventually into the adult group.  I have a lingering memory of the day I used two strips of red tape to make a cross on the side of my brown book bag as I said out loud: “I am going to be a missionary in Africa.”  So that, too, is a path I might have taken.

The “what ifs” could continue on for pages, so I am right now putting a halt to it. The Revolution happened, and as a result, so much that could have been did not come to be.

When I compare my life as I have actually lived it with the many “could have been” I realize that the seed that was planted in my early childhood by my family and by my school, did come to fruition: not only did I graduate from high school, I graduated from an Ursuline high school in Dallas, Texas.  I attended three universities and completed a Master’s Degree in Religious Studies. I have worked in some capacity or another in Catholic institutions almost all my working life. And although I did not marry a boy from Belén, my husband, who is also Cuban, was a member of the last graduating class of La Salle, another prestigious all-boys Catholic school in Havana.

The difference in the “what could have been if” lies not so much in what I have done, it lies on the crucial fact that all that I have done I could have done in Cuba speaking Spanish only, and because of the Revolution, I have done it all in the United States, speaking English.  The big differences: the place and the language. Though I feel blessed that I was able to learn English and am forever grateful to my adopted country, my heart bleeds for the Cuba that I could have helped build and for  the church in Cuba to which I could have contributed.  Even a deeper hurt is the memory of my parents, and the members of their generation who came into exile, who lost everything for which they had worked, including, in the end, the hope of ever returning to their native land.

In 2009, a series of unrelated events led me to reexamine and reacquaint myself with my Cuban past. The journey has been exciting, joyful, as well as sorrowful. It has also led me to harbor, once again, the hope that my parents lost. I have come to believe that it is still possible that in Cuba what could have been if, will be, before the end of our own lifetime.