VOICES
PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORIES By Emara Saez
In 1999, two awe-struck Cuban immigrants stepped off of a plane in Miami, Florida to discover a world they never could’ve imagined. A few years later, they managed to bring some family to the US; eventually, my parents started a family of their own. I was born in Tampa, Florida as the oldest daughter of my parents and lived in a predominantly Latino neighborhood until I was eight years old. The loud whizz of cars speeding by, voices of neighbors on their patios, and loud reggaeton blasting from teenagers’ stereos would filter in through the windows of my house and eventually became the sounds of my childhood. I grew up eating Cuban food like arroz amarillo, tostones, and sopa. The house was always full of guests— usually the friends of my parents and my extended family. My childhood was largely defined by living in an intergenerational household, as my grandmother Niria lived with us. Niria was unlike any other person I have known. She and her five siblings were raised by their single father in a small Cuban town called Yaguajay. As the eldest sibling, she practically raised her younger siblings. She never had the opportunity to 10 TUFTS OBSERVER MAY 2, 2022
attend school, so she was mostly illiterate. Despite this, she was still incredibly witty and resourceful. Her childhood was marked by intense struggles with poverty and food insecurity, and, at age 18, she had her first child. She gave birth to three more kids after, including my mother, and raised them all as a single mother. In the ’50s and ’60s, it was practically unheard of for an unmarried older woman to make a living for herself in Cuba, but my grandmother did it. She was an incredible businesswoman, selling cigars, canned tomato sauce, toothpaste, and anything else she could acquire in bulk in order for her children to be clothed, fed, and taken care of. In 2000, she left her small town and emigrated to the US to help my parents. Shortly after arriving, she began working as a nanny for a young family with a baby. Niria always had a way with children, perhaps because of her upbringing. When my parents finally decided to have children, she was more than ready to play the role of the doting grandmother; that is exactly what she did, and, in the process, she became my first best friend. My mom returned to work a few weeks after having me, so Niria became my second mother in my infancy and youth. I called her “Mami” and called my
mother “Mama”. When my mother would scold me, I’d run and hide behind Mami’s skirt. When I’d fall and scrape my knees, Mami would always pick me up. When I was sick with a cold, Mami was always ready to heal me with a dozen home remedies (Vick’s VapoRub was her favorite). She was always my protector. Mami was the one who taught me to speak my mother tongue, Spanish. She taught me how to sew, even though I soon forgot everything she taught me about her precious Singer sewing machine. I learned the importance of food as a vehicle for comfort by watching her cook. She was the only one who was allowed in the kitchen during meal times, and I vividly remember watching her whirl around in her green apron. My mother and I would joke that she was like a tornado—messily whizzing around from one end of the kitchen to the other, leaving a trail of open cabinets, scattered spice bottles, and dirty pans behind her. Mami was fundamental to my upbringing as a stable, calming presence that balanced out the chaos of life. As she aged, however, the roles reversed. She developed Alzheimer’s when I was in high school, and slowly that wretched disease stole her away from me. My mother was
