Veronica Vega’s diary

“Do you want to eat, or do you want to buy the jeans?” I overheard a woman ask her teenage son. What a difficult choice!

There was a knock at the door, I opened it, and was surprised to see a young man with a yellow postal package.

A friend was telling me she felt like she was in an involuntary obstacle race: “Every day, the bar I have to jump gets higher!”

When I see houses in danger of collapse, I remember Juan Carlos, a friend who is no longer in Cuba.

I often find myself remembering my bicycle, and how it shrunk the distances in Alamar, the community east of Havana where I still live.

In Cuba of the 1970s, there were no videocassette recorders, computers, or recording devices… Each moment was irreversible, like in life.

I don’t know why I remember that trip to Varadero in 2016 so much. It wasn’t really for pleasure; we were just going to pick up a tablet…