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The kids and I went down to Little Havana this morning,
for breakfast, culture, and groceries. I love Little
Havana, there are domino parks with old men on folding
chairs, with crisp guyaberas, fat cigars (not lit).
I suspect for each old Cuban Gentleman who has his lips
parted on a Cuban with no flame, there is an elderly
flame or coffee haired woman who has long since stopped
putting up with the smell or the health risks. They
still handle them with great finesse' however, and I
as well as they believe them to be smoking.
There is cafe con leche' in delicate white cups and
saucers balanced on each tippy cafe table, Spanish conversations
drifting and mingling, exotic birds talking on the balconies
of apartments above, broad smiles, laugh lines, granddaughters,
mothers, and grandmothers, sons, fathers, and grandfathers
engaged in their families and their neighbors...there
is a buzz of life, energy, that white suburbia just
doesn't match. It's passionate, colors, vibrancy, intrigue,
small shops that beckon your attention for the finds
for pennies you'd be sure to retrieve from inside...
its an adventure.
Everyone engages us in conversation and even when we
fumble through our limited Spanish resources they continue
on smiling and talking as if by the time their finished,
surely we will have caught on. Its charming & we
smile back openly. Breakfast was nice, a blue vinyl
booth, with wood trim, scrambled eggs, toasted Cuban
bread, potatoes, and cafe' con leche. After we finished
we made our way over to the grocery store, El Presidente',
always packed and always cheep. Fresh locally grown
produce just splayed out everywhere. Mangos, Papayas,
yucca, avocado, sour sop, fresh, fresh, fresh. When
we were leaving the grocery store my daughter said,
"Mom, I just love this place." I said, "me
too".
We turned out onto a road I hadn't taken before a back
way with cement buildings one after the other in a row,
apartment buildings in shades of coral, lime, lemon,
and white, Spanish tile numbers, and lots of ornate
wrought iron work on the windows below and the gates
between, then the buildings got rougher, a loss of color,
a loss of life, a loss of feeling, I was feeling a loss
of my energy for a moment, I missed the green, I felt
the lives that went on in the tight apartments, about
their interiors, just wondering, drifting, then when
As I let those thoughts close in a bit, a pleasant
surprise, a light caught our car at just the right place,
and there was a skinny alley between the gray apartments...a
haven, Valhalla, Eden, paradise, and there was the garden
keeper, an elderly woman bent over into a L shape from
many years of tending her plants.
They were exquisite, I put down my window and smelled
the air, it WAS better there, I smelled ginger, banana,
mint, I smelled earth in this skinny skinny hallway...it
was beautiful, the life was so great, brimming, spilling,
merging forth, uncontained and contained all at once
& the garden keeper with all of her years and the
shape the universe had delivered to her & what she
tended there. Enough beauty to hold my heart captive,
to fill my lungs with a sweetness, to have tears that
longed to water her plants, flowers, spices, fruit,
tendrils, seemingly endless water for her earth.
I'm wishing you all an alley view of the universe today,
or a day soon.
Namaste'
AnaKai
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