I regret that as a child I didn’t see the importance of asking questions about my family’s ancestral homes. I didn’t ask about the voyages they took from Spain, or the struggles they overcame to create the world into which I was born. It has taken me most of my adult life to gather the few stories that I now know as facts. For I know now with near certainty about their crossings from unnamed places in Andalucía, Asturias, Las Canarias, and Galicia, into the Cuban countryside. There is so much more that I do not know.
Were they peasants working on another man’s fields or the tradespeople of their town? Did they migrate to escape poverty, or were their pockets filled with gold? Did they live near the sea, and was it easy for them to find a ship to board? Or was their journey to the sea long and filled with imagined demons and perils? Were they unschooled and overwhelmed by things unknown, and by superstitions controlled? Did they believe only in themselves? Or did they believe for certain in a God they could trust? On their journeys, did they stop in the churches to pray or worship on the day set aside for the Lord?
I didn’t think to ask these things when I had my family with me. And now, they are all gone.