Thread to Sew Up Dreams

By Sara

HAVANA TIMES – “Mama, you have to sew up my shoes again,” were my daughter’s words this morning as she was getting ready to go to school. The same shoes that some friends had given us as they no longer fit their son, and thanks to them, she’s able to still go to school. I’ve had to take them to the cobbler more than once because they were coming apart or becoming unstitched.

My daughter is one of the hardest-working in her class, she’s disciplined, studies hard to get good grades and likes to work in a group and get to school early. But despite being a good girl in many people’s eyes, including my own, she didn’t get a present from the Three Kings, and Santa didn’t come to visit her this year.

“Mama, they forgot about me,” she’d say. “Why? If I did my homework and chores?

“Danielito got a skateboard and a bike and the teacher is always telling him off. I don’t understand what I did wrong, mama.”

That’s when all those “egalitarian” slogans come rushing to my mind, which are as fake as this System and its doctrines. When your child asks you for an explanation that you can’t give, or rather you can. However, you prefer to save them the additional heartache to the pain they already suffer from not having basic things like a soda, a chocolate bar or toy to stimulate their imagination and innocence. The treasure of childhood.

Well, you have to improvise, work magic or whatever you want to call it. This is something that us Cubans who remain on the island continue to fight for every day, to see our children grow, feed them, sewing and patching up their dreams every day with thread taken from our own blood.

Read more from Sara’s diary here.