A cherished childhood friend.

July 2000

This is an iconic memory from my distant past. The big "ceiba" tree I knew from infancy is still there, and my hometown never looked smaller. This tree goes back to a time when my grandparents were children and earlier. My grandfather used to tell the story when the guys would gather around the ceiba on Sunday afternoons and engage in gas passing contests. My father remembered a big breasted African woman who would sit on one of the tree’s mammoth roots and breast feed neighborhood children for free or a small fee. I returned to my hometown after 41 years, with my then 12 year old son, my wife who had never been to Cuba, and my mom for whom the town also looked small and the people had not changed at all. My hometown is not far from La Habana; a dusty little town called San Antonio de los Baños.