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About Josie Urbistondo: Hi! My name is Josie. I have been teaching writing and literature and writing myself for about a decade now. Currently, I teach at the University of Miami and mentor high school dual enrollment faculty for Florida International University. It wasn’t until I had my daughter that I yearned for a new space to exercise creative freedom that captured all facets of my identity. Our blog, www.doubtsanddesires.com, I co-author with a dear, long-time friend, Linjen Neogi, became just that. We broker content we find valuable, fun and enriching.

We strive to be a stop for the brainy, hungry, traveling, all around contemporary mami – we hope to provide meditations on life, love, motherhood and the spaces in between. We are here for the constant reader or the casual glance. Working around nap schedules, board meetings and all around beautiful chaos.

This article was originally published on Doubts & Desires.

Five kind of Cuban practices I will continue with my daughter.

1.Every NYE we will go outside with suitcases and walk around in circles so that we guarantee to travel that upcoming year.

2.I will dip her chupete (pacifier) in Cuban coffee to build up caffeine tolerance. Actually, my husband does not approve, so I won’t confirm or deny this one.

3.An azabache is a must. She is the only Gymboree kid I see with the azabache on or on her baby bag…gotta fend off that evil eye; it’s a 24-7 gig!

4.Versailles - Before Lebron James and every politician who makes a stop in Miami made this a must tourist destination, this has been the go to spot. After a concert or my ballet recitals, we would end up there. My aunt says it feels like the open air restaurants in Havana and my fave Gustavo Pérez Firmat has an amazing analysis of all the mirrors inside; how Cubans see themselves in those mirrors.

5.The loteria game - It’s like BINGO with no letters and you bet money. The bets range from a few cents to $1 if you are feeling lucky. I learned the game when I was four or five, but despite your age you better bring a few cents to join the pot. It was our version of family game night, and I don’t remember any phones on the table!!!

courtesy of Gustavo Perez Firmat, University of Texas Press

These memories morphed into practices now are a product of my “CBA generation,” what Pérez Firmat calls, the Cuban-Bred Americans. I leave you with his line - “Like other second-generation immigrants, they maintain a connection to their parents’ homeland, but it is a bond forged by my experiences rather than their own. For my children, Cuba is an enduring, perhaps endearing, fiction. Cuba is for them as ethereal as the smoke and as persistent as the smell of their grandfather’s cigars (which are not even Cuban but Dominican)” (5). Now with the political climate thawing between the US and Cuba, I wonder how identities will change for so many CBA’s when stepping onto Cuban soil. Leaving politics aside, I am hesitant of how my childhood memories may shift if/ when that day would ever come for me.