My mom just text me to remind me to toast "El año que viene en Cuba" at midnight. For as long as I can remember my family, my mother especially has always toasted to that on New Year's Eve, my dad not so much, he was born in the US as was his father before him, he's never been to Cuba, he doesn't even speak Spanish. But my mom still remembers the night she and her family were woken up, hastily grabbing a few belongings and stowing away on a boat to meet my Grandfather in the US who had been granted political asylum for his condemnation of not only communism but the corrupt government of Batista. I can't imagine having to leave everything you know behind, your friends, family, toys, clothes, school, everything to go to a foreign land because an arrest warrant (which in those days usually resulted in a bullet to the head behind the police station) had been issued for your father and that anything would be done to make sure he came back to Cuba, even taking into custody your pregnant mother, you and young siblings as leverage.
It's a toast her parents always made and one she always makes, one I always make on her behalf, even though a life in Cuba is as alien to me as a life on Mars. Because of my grandfather's beliefs members of his family are not allowed back into Cuba, both my grandparents died and never saw Cuba again. Who knows if my mother will ever see the tobacco fields of Pinar del Rio, her family once owned and she ran through as a child, I know she hopes for it every day, but fifty plus years later she still waits and makes the same toast that is more of a prayer."El año que viene en Cuba/Next year in Cuba" I guess you have to have hope and keep the faith.
