For some reason today, my father is on my mind. I guess I have read a few blogs that triggered the thoughts of him.

My father was the father that everyone would wish for. He was nurturing, caring and strong. He showed his love in every way and all of the time. He died when I was 16.

My father grew up in Cuba in a household with many kids.  His family was very catholic so he had a lot of brothers and sister.  I believe there were 12 in total because his mother raised the her husband's children from a previous marriage. I heard stories about a few of them but I'm not sure of how many siblings were his real brother's and sisters. I feel like I knew so little about him and with time the memories of his past, of his stories have faded. When my dad was 12, he had to stop attending school in order to help put food on the table for his family. It was never clear why he had to do this but from what I remember, they were very poor. At 12, he decided to sell flavored shaved ice in a cart that he acquired. He did this for several years and by the time he was 21, he had 6 carts with people that worked the carts for him. He saved money and was able to buy himself a car in the 1940's. While he managed and worked his carts, he would rent his car to a friend of his that would use it as a taxi service. When he realized that this was lucrative, he bought another car and rented it out as well. For fun, he started playing baseball for his town’s team and he was good at it. He would travel to games on the weekends. In his early twenties he decided he wanted to buy a house that his mother could live in and hopefully make some money off of it. So he purchased a two family home and the rent from the rented unit helped provide his mom some income. He then bought himself a home that did the same for him and one for investment only. In his 30's (the 1950's) he opened a grocery store in a town called Remedios, it was a part of the Las Villas province in Cuba. He was successful and before long started looking at buying himself a farm. He had always dreamt of having his own little ranch where he could go to on the weekends. His dreams were slowly coming true. He fell in love in this time but the person lied to him and he realized he had to let go.  He still had all of the different businesses going, the ice carts, houses and rented cars.

In 1959 when Castro took power, my dad realized that life was about to change. He was not able to get the products he needed for his grocery store. He decided to sell the cars and he was able to do so, he was also able to sell the house that was strictly a rental house. However he did not want to sell the store since that was his primary source of livelihood. When he went to market to purchase goods for the store, he had trouble getting rice. This was a staple in his community and he spoke up and explained how much he needed it since he was the primary grocery store in his town. He was arrested on the spot and charged with a crime against the government. He spent the night in jail but this made him realize that he needed to get out of the country before he got into any real trouble. By 1961, the store, his carts, the houses had all become government property and he was allowed to live in one of the houses but that was it. He knew he had to get out of Cuba but with little contact to anyone outside of Cuba this was hard.

In 1962 he was reunited via mail with an old friend Teresa. They were married via proxy (power of attorney) and she paid to get him to the United States via the Freedom Flights. When he arrived, he had nothing and he knew no one except for her. They built their lives together and by the late 1960's they bought a multi-family house in NJ.  He also financed a car, which he almost lost when he was layed off from a job.  He bought a Play 4 lottery ticket and won enough to make the late payments on the car.  He would tell me the number he played, it had won for him twice in his life; both times where he was about to loose something. The house they bought was converted into 3 families and they lived on the middle floor. They renovated the bottom floor and the top one was already rented.  The rent from the other two units paid for the mortgage and taxes on the house. My dad worked in factories in North NJ because it was very hard for him to learn the language; he was in his late forties and early fifties at the time.   I sometimes wonder how hard it must have been for him to go from being well known and accomplished in his community, reaching his dreams to working in a factory for near minimum wage.

In 1970, Teresa died of Leukemia and he was alone again. He had made friends here but had never had children because she could not . He was 50 years old. He never gave me very many details about his life with Teresa, he said she was a good woman and he loved her for what she had done for him. I always knew that this love was a different love, a more loyal and friend type of love than what I would want.