Often, world history compounds the nature of internal paradox. In my life, the origin of this compounded paradox traces back to Cuba.

In 1950, my Cuban father was born in Sancti Spíritus. Like many, my Cuban grandparents’ support of the revolution as wealthy, educated professionals was all-encompassing. My Cuban grandmother was an attorney who attended law school at the University of Havana with her classmate, Fidel Castro. As a physician, my Cuban grandfather smuggled money, food, and medical supplies to the rebel fighters in the Escambray Mountains, where he treated Che Guevara’s asthma on multiple occasions. During the Battle of Santa Clara, my grandparents hid rebel fighters in their home. As my father’s family fought to rid their homeland of American interests, they were unknowingly tugging on a thread that would lead to the complete dissolution of their familial and cultural universe.

Nearby on the island, my American mother was born in Banes in 1951. Banes was the hometown of the US-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, making it a prime location for US multinationals including United Fruit—where my blue-collar American grandfather worked as a machinist at the sugar mill. My mother spent her formative years insulated in the tropical cocoon of colonial bliss on the plantation. Never again would my American grandparents experience the luxuries afforded by this chapter in Cuba. They considered these years the greatest of their lives.

After the initial triumph of the revolution, my Cuban grandparents were offered high-ranking government positions within the Castro regime, but chose to remain in the private sector. In time, they realized that Castro’s promise of freedom would not be kept. When the chance at a life of freedom came for their child in the Peter Pan flights, my grandparents kissed my father goodbye, unsure if they would ever see him again. He was evacuated along with 14,000 unaccompanied minors on planes bound for the United States. While my grandmother was able to join my father six months later, my grandfather’s profession as a physician was deemed necessary to the revolution. Carrying only his medical satchel, he eventually escaped by boat with the help of a fisherman who was his patient.

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