The Red Umbrella

  I just finished The Red Umbrella by Christina Gonzalez.  This is the story of 14 year old Lucia Alvarez and her seven year old brother, Frankie and their journey from Cuba to Nebraska in the early 1960s.  I was floored at how scary Cuba was back then because I should have known.  My foster sister, Raisa Godin, told me of marching with the Youth of the Revolution (singing the words to Christian hymns to the melodies.  "No one could hear", she laughed.  "They were all just shouting.") and of neighbors watching her house in Cuba.  But Raisa always made everything sound like fun or like an adventure!  The neighbors sat with their lights on watching the Godin's dark house.  "They couldn't see us,"  Raisa explained, "but we could see everything they did." The book made me frightened for her and my other foster sister, Mayra, and for their parents, who eventually joined their children in Pennsylvania.  Frightened and aghast that I lived through that with them and never even paid attention.

Fourteen thousand Cuban children were sent to the United States to protect them from the Revolution, and from being forcibly taken away from their families.  Cuban parents reasoned that their children were better thrown on the mercy of strangers, than living in a Cuba without freedom.

Lucia is sure that she will return to Cuba in a few weeks, then months and then, finally when her parents join her and Frankie in Nebraska, in a few years.  But they never went home.  They made new lives here.  Roberto and Amy Godin died here, American citizens.  Raisa and Mayra became citizens and married and raised their families here.  And never once, until now, have I wondered what they miss most about their homeland.  The warmth, I'm guessing as I live through another cloudy chilly Spring day.

Imagine going from the tropics to Nebraska, though.  Pennsylvania was hard enough!!!

Well, now I have to write letters to Raisa and Mayra and tell them about The Red Umbrella.  And tell them that we were lucky to have the parents that we had.  Me, because my parents opened out home to them; they were lucky that their parents valued freedom.   And I want them to tell me about Cuba.  After reading this book and My Havana by Rosemary Wells, I really want to visit Cuba!