Journey Back Into The Vault

Mario Cartaya

Description

Journey Back into the Vault: In Search of My Faded Cuban Childhood Footprints invites you to travel with me back to the land of my birth for the first time in fifty-six years in order to reclaim my forgotten Cuban childhood memories, original identity, and once-promised destiny. Come with me as I search for the now faded footprints I once left behind in the homes, school, and playgrounds of the first nine years of my life; help me honor the grandparents, uncles, and aunts I never saw again at their final resting place; and meet family members I never knew I had. Laugh, sigh, and cry with me during the many unforeseen experiences, astonishing events, and serendipitous moments that would forever change my life. Enjoy the improbable story of a courageous journey aimed at breaching the subconscious vault I once built to store the difficult memories of a childhood usurped, destiny denied, and loving family forever separated by geopolitical events. This is the story of those psychological forces that help define us, the power of enduring hope, and how by achieving purity of heart, reconciliation, and a soul at rest, we can evolve into better versions of ourselves—a universal message of love and enlightenment that can only begin with each individual’s search for self-actualization and inner peace.

Sujets

• Santé et bien-être
• Développement personnel
• Psychological
• Inspirational
• Historical
• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Psychology
• Journey
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 25 février 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781664199279
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

“Mario Cartaya’s “Journey Back into the Vault: In Search of My Faded Cuban Childhood Footprints” is a love story of family and country (Cuba and the United States). What a superb storyteller. This is a beautiful, meaningful story. Indeed, it is a trea sure.”
David Lawrenc e Jr.
Author of A Dedicated Life: Journalism, Justice and a Chance for Every Child; Retired publisher—Miami Herald; Chair of The Children’s Movement of Florida
“On this bittersweet journey of rediscovery, Mario Cartaya finds little-remembered places of his pre-revolutionary childhood, family he never knew he had, and a Cuba that is bewitching but still captive to the failed economic and political system that triggered the diaspora long ago. His story packs an emotional wa llop.”
David Powell
Author of Ninety Miles and a Lifetime Away: Memories of Early Cuban Exiles
“This true story is a love story as heartfelt as any told in a novel. A tale of love of family, place, and relations hips.
“It will trigger memories of one’s own childhood experiences and bring back those happy and/or trying times; but if lost, may suggest you journey to your own vault wherever it ma y be.”
Charles Redner
Author of Long-A-Coming; Down But Never Out; Terror Travels the Devil’s Highway ; Executive Editor and Publisher—The Hummingbird Review
“Mr. Cartaya has a crisp, colorful and descriptive writing style. His moving passages tap into the readers’ sentiments and enable them to feel the many emotions and astonishing surprises the author experienced during his first return to Cuba—after five decades of exile in the United States. His story conveys a spiritual message often lost in these materialistic times: When we engage on a voyage of self-discovery, as the author did, the Universe often supplies surprising guideposts that point us in the right direc tion.”
Kingsley Guy
Author of Piercing the Veil: A Skeptic Journalist Discovers Unseen Worlds and Queen of Heavens; Retired journalist who served 23 years as the editorial page editor of South Florida’s Sun-Sentinel newspaper
JOURNEY BACK INTO THE VAULT
 
In Search of My Faded Cuban Childhood Footprints
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
MARIO CARTAYA
 
Copyright © 2022 by Mario Cartaya.
 
Library of Congress Control Number:
2021923221
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6641-9929-3
 
Softcover
978-1-6641-9928-6
 
eBook
978-1-6641-9927-9
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 05/25/2023
 
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
834089
CONTENTS
Preface
Exile and Return: Finding Clarity
 
Day 1     Saying Hello
Day 2     I Was Him; He Was My Youth
Day 3     “It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again”
Day 4     An Old Friend Named Viñales
Day 5     “I Am A Mateo Too”
Day 6     The Pelican
Day 7     Saying Goodbye
 
 
 
 
The people and events depicted in this book are real.
 
Dedicated to My Father
Juan Ignacio Cartaya
 
(Circa 1952) My mother, me, older brother and father
The turbulent winds of change swept over Cuba in 1959, leaving my father with little choice but to make the heart-wrenching decision to flee the land of our birth with my mother, brother, and me toward a new life in the United States.
Life as a political exile was challenging for my father. Nonetheless, he wore the responsibility of providing for us with steadfastness, humility, a healthy sense of humor, and an uncompromising optimism that a better future was always within reach.
My father taught us, by example, how to believe in ourselves, dream, work hard, overcome adversities and strive to become the authors of our individual stories. He was our unwavering catalyst of hope – our rock. He often worked two to three jobs at a time, unselfishly using disposable income to help family members still in Cuba join us in the United States; noble acts he often described as his penance for having separated us from the loved ones we once left behind.
In time, through hard work, grit, and determination, he lifted us from immigrant want into a life no different than our middle-class American neighbors.
My father unfortunately died while still young and was buried with much unresolved pain and anguish. It has always saddened me how his life, uprooted by unforeseen challenges and geopolitical events he had no control over or interest in, denied the dreams and once-promising future of a good man.
Long ago, I dedicated my life to be a validation of his decisions, principles, integrity, and unconditional love. I have always sought to honor him.
He was my father and best friend.
This story is dedicated to his memory.
PREFACE
The Vault
An Unanticipated Reality
Have you ever returned to that place where you keep the painful and inconvenient memories you chose to discard along the way?
The evolution of our individual uniqueness weaves through our life experiences in unpredictable paths as we mature. It is a normal and transforming process by which increasingly sophisticated forms of individuality develop from an initial sense of identity and self-concept. As we bond with our family and conform to society’s culture, mores, traditions, language, and expectations, we abandon our previous identities and store them, along with other experiences we seek to forget, inside a protective subconscious place we rarely choose to acknowledge or visit.
If your path through individualization, however, is usurped by an event so powerful that it changes the trajectory of your life, thrusting you into a new reality where the truths you once built your life upon no longer apply, then what becomes of you?
If at an age when socialization and acceptance are a priority but your uniqueness is interpreted by others as nonconforming, how do you rebuild your identity in order to assimilate?
I know the answers all too well.
Leaving My Promised Life
The first nine years of my life were spent in Cuba, the country of my birth, where I developed my earliest sense of identity, self-concept, and personal uniqueness. Being the youngest son of a middle-class family and having grown to love baseball, the arts, and attending school, I thought of myself as smart and social with youthful impulses that often got me into trouble. I enjoyed the support of my extended family core and shared their expectation that, like them, I would eventually create a successful life in Havana and continue to grow our family bonds there.
It wasn’t meant to be. On November 13, 1960, my parents, brother, and I fled Cuba and immigrated toward an unanticipated future in the United States, leaving behind our heritage, possessions, loved ones, the lives we built, and the futures we planned. The next day I awoke in Miami, a stranger in a strange land, confused and uncertain about my new American reality. At the tender age of nine, incapable of understanding the challenges I would face during an alternate life in exile, I grew wary of my suddenly undefined future and the collection of choices I would have to make in order to forge a new American persona.
During the weeks and months that followed, I developed insecurities I had never known. At an age when peer acceptance is so important, I was often treated by my classmates and teachers as different . Sometimes I felt invisible to those too busy to bother with a young foreigner they did not care to understand. My confidence suffered, and I started to question who I was.
I dreamed of the day I would be accepted by my fourth-grade classmates, teachers, and neighborhood kids.
“The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of ac tion.”
—John Dewey
Eventually, I started to speak enough English to communicate; experienced core American traditions like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July; discovered hot dogs, hamburgers, and apple pie; and learned to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Soon, I was even singing every word of the American national anthem. Most importantly, my athleticism helped me excel in football and baseball, allowing me to be picked in the early rounds of sandlot games and rewarding me with the peer acceptance and recognition I sought most.
Almost a year after my arrival in the United States, the process of acceptance, socialization, and assimilation had begun.
I was no longer invisible.
Finally, the day arrived when I adjusted to my new culture and felt no different than my American-born friends. After all, the United States was the land of cowboys, Superman, Mighty Mouse, and rock and roll. It was home to Major League Baseball, and with a little luck, I could watch Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax on Game of the Week telecasts.
Loving my new country was easy; becoming an American took a little time.
A Silent Consequence
The process of metamorphosis into an American taught me how to methodically