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My mom died today. Joining my dad who passed away 40 days ago. She was a pretty remarkable lady. An immigrant from Cuba, she lived with the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore during college. Here (on the left) she is in Cuba in the 1930s. 
She always was sad about leaving Cuba—but hated how Castro had destroyed her country. She went back once to visit—and said—I’ll never go back again. I love this photo. Maybe the early 40s?
Here are her mom and dad, Luz and Jose, at the famous La Floridita Bar in Havana. They were a very poor family. My mom was able to leave Cuba to get an education in the US.
She’d go on to marry my dad (mixed race marriages were illegal in Maryland in 1959). The year their sixth child (my little brother) was born the US Supreme Court would overturn the ban on interracial marriage. Here she is with me and dad.
She learned two more languages fluently —English and French, and became an educator. She had a reputation for being super-strict, which made me very popular (not!) since she taught at my high school.
She and my dad sent all six of us to college and many of us to grad school. Here we are touring Harvard. I’m scowling in the front row, age 12.
She was pretty awesome. But mostly I wish lots of young, working women had access to her wisdom. “Everyone gets the same 24 hours. Decide how you’ll spend yours”. “Take 24 hours to sit in bed and cry.. then stop complaining and make a list and plan your comeback”
“Keep ten dollars in your bra so you can leave when you want”. “People are basically full of shit, stop taking their stupidity to heart”. “You never stop fighting for the important stuff”.
She put this ad in our local paper when I was a kid—to protest discriminatory housing in our town. We were the only black family in our neighborhood, so it didn’t win her a lot of friends:
She was pretty great. Miss you, Mami. ❤️
