There are times when world history compounds the nature of internal paradox. For me, the origin of this compounded paradox traces back to Cuba.

In 1950, my Cuban father was born in Sancti Spíritus. My grandmother was an attorney who attended law school at the University of Havana with her classmate, Fidel Castro. As a physician, my grandfather delivered money and medical supplies to the guerrilla fighters in the Sierra Maestra under the repeat guise of a picnic in the mountains. Like many, my grandparents’ initial support of the Cuban Revolution as wealthy, educated professionals was all-encompassing. In time, my father would be covertly evacuated from Cuba on the Peter Pan flights wherein 14,000 unaccompanied minors were sent to the United States. While my grandmother was able to join my father six months later, my grandfather was deemed necessary to the revolution. Carrying his medical satchel, my grandfather would eventually escape by boat with the help of one of his patients.

In 1951, my American mother was born in Banes, Cuba. Banes was the hometown of Cuban president Fulgencio Batista, making it a prime location for US multinationals to capitalize on the Cuban government’s alignment with industry. My American grandfather was a blue-collar machinist who worked at the United Fruit mill. My mother would spend her formative years in the tropical cocoon of colonial bliss my American grandparents would recall as the greatest years of their lives. Nearby, my father’s family was fighting to rid their island nation of American interests, unknowingly tugging on a thread that would lead to the complete dissolution of their familial and cultural universe.

Many years down the road my parents would meet in New Orleans. It was a seismic union where both sides of the coin of history would converge in my heritage as a doubly-lived paradox awash in humanity’s geopolitical foibles.