Great Home Cooks : Behind the Cover

It’s funny how some things come into your possession. This picture traveled several thousand miles over two years before my father or I saw it. It was February 1962 and my family had just landed in the United States from Cuba. While we were waiting to be processed at the refugee center in Miami a photographer on assignment for a Brazilian magazine snapped my father giving me my first American Coca Cola--my first of many. I’m not sure my father realized that we’d been photographed.

Later that year, my aunt, who had left Cuba and was living in Mexico City, was leafing through magazines in a dentist’s waiting room. There, in a Brazilian magazine, was a picture of her brother and her niece taken in Miami. By then we were living in Los Angeles and it took more than a year before my aunt came here and we got to see the picture for the first time. Even though I’ve switched from Coke to Diet Pepsi, I still treasure this picture.