Rudy & the Rose-Colored Glasses

Because you can’t just look back at the past with the same old eyes…

Here’s the story of a much-needed getaway to Miami and a lesson on how to cope with change.

Within a few hours of arriving in Miami, I am whisked away from the airport; spend a small fortune on a tiny morsel of “local” farm-to-table fish (how they confirmed it’s of the 305 area code variety – I don’t know); visit an art gallery and debate whose paintings – Fabio Napoleoni or Romero Britto – has the most vivid colors; partake in a pig roast hosted by a bearded man wearing a mesh-back trucker hat with a freshly stitched acronym that stands for something I’d rather not repeat; rock out to a live indie band; stand side by side muscled macho men with European accents and their stilettoed bandage dress-wearing dates as they waited for the valet to bring around their Porsches & Lamborghinis (and I for my very first controversial Uber experience), and then, somehow, the night ends with a fuzzy vintage-looking photo of me and a mustachioed, shirtless (but bow-tie wearing) blow-up doll in hot pants.

A lot to take in within a few hours, but all of it, a very welcome gift from a long-time friend who knew I needed the distraction after a series of undesirable events that had come upon me in recent months.

The next morning, I wake up to find the photo on a social media site along with the hashtag #ilivewhereyouvacation. It was true. He does live in Miami and I was on vacation but there was a time when I did live there. A time when I called Miami “home”.

My Miami was set into motion over a thousand miles away in Hoboken, New Jersey by a man named Rodolfo, or “Rudy” for short. Rudy was new in town and worked as a machine operator in a local lace factory. He had only been in the United States for less than a year, and the year was 1981. Twenty-four year old Rudy originally arrived in Miami following the 1980 Mariel boatlift, a mass emigration of Cubans who left Cuba’s Marial Harbor in search of exile. Most were said to be criminals, mentally ill, and misfits. Rudy was neither – until his big brother came into the picture. Rumor has it, the only reason they were able to leave Cuba, was because his older brother falsified their Mariel applications to reflect a previous stint in prison.

Knowing his brother was not a good influence, Rudy tried to start his own life with distant relatives in New Jersey. He quickly found a job and met a girl. A tough talking and single (by circumstance) Puerto Rican New Yorker, who also operated the large and heavy lace machinery despite her growing 6-month old belly. The lady, my mother. The belly, me. And Rudy was my Papi – a loving term for my new stepdad and a word I haven’t uttered in the 23 years since his death.

When I was about 3 years old, we moved to Miami at the urging of Rudy’s brother, the one who accompanied him on the Marial boatlift on the whim of lie. He lured Rudy with the promise of a lucrative business venture involving Miami’s main vice in the 70s and 80s (another one of his bright ideas). What I remember of the years that followed, are odd memories of standing in lines at the public assistance office on a hot day and staring out of my trailer window, through the chain link fence, at other kids playing in the community pool. But there were also parties in mansions and on yachts, weekends in beach-front condos, and Sunday night chicken fights on hidden sprawling acres of farmland. There were also road trips to deliver secret packages to “cousins” who lived in other states. While we always returned home to our trailer, Rudy’s brother bought a large mansion with a swimming pool that we were not allowed in.But his lavish lifestyle ended a few years later with the dramatic raid of his Tampa estate in which he, his wife, and cohorts were all arrested, leaving three young girls, under the age of seven, terrified and crying together on a bed. My uncle later died in prison. As for Rudy’s fate…he was diagnosed with lung cancer, a disease that plagued much of his family, and died at the mere age of 36.

For some time after his death, with a new baby brother in tow, my mother and I scrambled to make sense of  a world without our Cuban family. We searched for a home, familiarity, and comfort for our loss. That search brought us back to Jersey.

Not exactly a picture-perfect memory but one that has stayed with me none-the-less. In that way, nostalgia can be a bit deceiving. Like an old photograph, it draws you in with the promise of rosy colors and soft tones and then unexpectedly sucker punches you, leaving jagged edges, tears, and spots.

I did not return to Miami for another decade, and when I did, I realized that nothing had changed. The streets, the food, the people, the beaches. It was all the same. The only thing missing, with a “Lot for Sale” sign out front, was the Liberty City trailer park that I had called home.

With the exception of its absence, all else was the same. The streets and neighborhood all seemed familiar, although some had increased in safety concerns. Over the years, I’ve continued to visit Miami on a frequent basis and discovered that nothing ever changes – odd in a placed dubbed “Magic City” for its rapid and seemingly supernatural growth. Perhaps the façade of a building or two may appear to look different with a new coat of paint but when you look closer you’ll realize the structural bones of the ghosts that haunt it still remain. The food, the sounds, the music, the people (albeit now more colorful and diverse), and even the palm trees, they bring me back to a time, when my Papi was alive, my mom was happy, black beans & rice were the meal of choice, salsa & merengue blared on the radio speakers, and the ocean with the moon glowing high over it, seemed ever so close to our front door.

I often think of Miami, and wonder what it would have been like to have stayed. What if grown-up me were now living and working there? Perhaps it wouldn’t be the same and toying with the idea of bringing my present into the past may only tarnish my childhood memories leaving me further in despair.

I recall the day that I was able to bring my mother back to Miami for a visit. She had not been there in almost 17 years. I would look at her face as she wandered about looking at all the same things I did when I first returned. She was an adult when we lived there so her memories of places and things were more vivid, her emotions raw. I wondered what was she thinking? Was she sad? Did she miss Rudy? Did she have hatred for my uncle and his evil plot to destroy the family with greed? Does she wish, like I often do, that we could turn back time?  She smiled as she looked around and echoed the familiar sentiment that “nothing has changed.” Her eyes a bit watery.

I wonder if for those that stayed behind, my friends and Cuban family, had Miami changed for them?

The film Midnight in Paris set out to explore the various aspects of nostalgia by introducing its main character, Gil Pender, a successful Hollywood screenwriter who dreams of escaping his seemingly unfulfilled present life and retreating to that of the roaring twenties where literary and artistic giants scoured the streets of Paris in search of inspiration. He longed to experienced joie de vivre that was Paris in the twenties. He wanted more than anything to be inspired, to live, love.

Instead, he struggles to find even the most basic inspiration needed to complete his novel, while dealing with the objectionable opinions of others like his snooty intellectual friend, Paul, who takes a jab at the subject matter of his novel. “Nostalgia is denial. Denial of the painful present. The name for this is Golden Age Thinking – the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one ones is living in – it’s a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.”

After falling in love with a beautiful woman named Adriana, who attempts to convince him that the 1890s La Belle Époque Paris is more desirable than the Jazz Age he preferred, Gill remembers that even antibiotics didn’t exist in the 19th century and people were dying left & right. He now understood that nostalgia is purely subjective and settles for the realization that every era has its unsatisfying and undesirable moments. 

We’re here in Miami today, because I felt stuck. I couldn’t figure out how to move forward so I came back home, to the past. I longed for Miami because of what I believed was its inability to change, despite those who say “Look! See how much Miami has changed! We now have Euro Asian cuisine and the hipsters that have transformed the Wynwood Arts District will one day take over the world!”

Ever since I first stepped foot on 79th street, it hasn’t changed for me. I can always go back to a beach, a restaurant, a street, and feel as though I am a kid again. I can stand on any sidewalk, close my eyes, smell the food, and listen to the heavily accented voices of the locals, and feel as though I am home and my dad is just around the corner.

Nostalgia is a sly one. It likes to sneak up on us and it doesn’t discriminate in the vulnerable moments when we’re feeling happy or sad. It’s generally a crowd pleaser but it’s totally unreliable in helping us seek answers for the future. In those moments when we’re feeling stuck, it’s best not to look back. The only way out is forward. But’s once in a while, it’s okay to dig out a few photos and think about the goodtimes – the good people – of our past.  

I’ve been quite talkative today…

As we wrap up our second day in Miami, let’s just sit here on this beach for a little while longer. I know the sun will eventually go down and soon we will have to take off our rose-colored glasses, but for now, let’s just sit…for somewhere in the distance, it is 1980 again and Rudy is boarding a boat.

JUST JOINING US ON OUR MIAMI TRIP?  CHECK OUT DAY ONE OF OUR MIAMI SERIES: “MEET THE WEIRDO AT THE WHEEL...”

ALL CAUGHT UP?  THEN CHECK OUT OUR NEXT POST IN THIS SERIES: “BELL HAVEN BLUES...“