For the past few days I’ve been at Goucher College for the alumnae weekend of the program in creative nonfiction from which I graduated in 2003. I was delighted to be back with my flock, having nothing but positive feelings about the nest in which the book Lost and Found in Cuba was conceived. Along with others who published books this year, I was invited to read to the gathered alums, current students, and faculty. The air was light with celebration even in the heat of August.  Among books we collectively feted were Illegal by fellow alum Terry Greene Sterling and Zoo Story by one of my mentors, Tom French.  

A confession: one of my indulgences while visiting Goucher was to cruise the Nordstrom’s next to the campus. Clothes-shopping is always more fun away from home and my suitcase often harbors a tissue-wrapped package or two after a trip. Unless the trip is to Cuba, that is. Yesterday as I was perusing sale racks, it occurred to me that Cuba was the only place I had ever traveled that offered not a single temptation of apparel. Instead, it offered forced abstinence from consumption and a mystery: where did all those gorgeous Cuban women buy their clothes?

In months of crisscrossing Havana on foot, I saw barely a single garment in a store window. So once, after a small gathering in Havana at the home of Enrique and Belkis, a gathering noteworthy for the presence of several beautifully-garbed women, I asked Belkis to solve the mystery.  You have to know where to go, she told me, where informal entrepreneurs hawk treasures out of the recesses of their homes in “stores” invisible from the street. She offered to take me “trapo-shopping” (rag shopping).

When I’m next in Havana, I want to take Belkis up on her offer. I’ll pack a stash of U.S. underpants to use for barter.

“How’s Gary?” my masseuse Charlie inquired upon greeting me yesterday. “Gary?” I asked, searching my brain. I was unable to think of a single Gary in my social circle. Charlie smiled as he watched me scramble to respond before I realized he was referring to Gary MacEoin from the book. He had been reading Lost and Found in Cuba and Gary, so dear to me when he was alive, had become real to Charlie.

And that is the miracle of writing— and the magic of reading—that marks left on blank white pages could do their symbolic work and bridge from the private world of my Cuba experience to the imagination of a reader. What an amazing process! As Charlie worked shiatsu magic on my sore muscles with his strong hands and socked feet, he recalled with delight details of Gary’s wisdom and our quirky encounters. The mirror of Charlie’s recollections coaxed memories of Gary back to the surface of my consciousness where I savored them again, completing the circle between reader and writer.

After our time together in Cuba, Gary and I kept in touch by email, mostly about writing. I never made it to one of his Saturday night open houses in San Antonio. He died in 2003 at the age of 94. On a steamy day in August, friends of Gary gathered in locations around the country to celebrate his extraordinary life. Those of us unable to attend one of the organized events were advised to honor him in personal ways. I claimed my MFA in writing from Goucher College that day and thought of Gary as the diploma was placed in my hand.

I have been looking for the perfect recipe for black beans ever since my Peace Corps days when I first tasted the saucy, smoky, and succulent frijoles prepared by the campesina wife of the farmer who grew them and cooked on an open fire in a clay pot. No recipe—of the many I have tried-- ever came close to matching the beans of my memory. I was about to relinquish all hope when I saw the recipe below in the March 7, 2010 New York Times Magazine. I decided to give it one last try and followed the directions exactly. TA DA--- at last! This is the Holy Grail of bean recipes, worth every step of preparation and every gram of fat. And these beans only get denser and more delicious with reheating. Now, if I can just find a clay pot and an open fire, perfection may be within reach!

Cuban Black Beans

1 ½ green peppers stemmed and seeded

10 garlic cloves

1 pound dried black beans, rinsed and picked over to remove any stones

1 smoked ham hock

2 bay leaves

5 teaspoons salt, or to taste

¼ cup olive oil

4 slices thick bacon, cut into ½ inch peaces

1 Spanish onion, diced

1 jalapeño pepper, stemmed and finely chopped

1 teaspoon dried oregano

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

3 T distilled white vinegar

1 T turbinado or other brown sugar

1.       Cut 1 green pepper into 1 inch squares. Smash and peel 4 of the garlic cloves. Put the green pepper and garlic into a large pot with the beans, ham hock, bay leaves and 1 T salt. Add 2 quarts water and bring to boil. Cover the pot and simmer until the beans are tender, an hour or more.

2.       Meanwhile, make a sofrito. Cut the remaining ½ green pepper into ¼ inch dice. Peel and finely chop the remaining garlic. Heat the olive oil in a very large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the bacon and cook, stirring occasionally, until it starts to brown, about 5 minutes. Add the green pepper and onion and cook, stirring, until slightly softened, about 3 minutes. Add the garlic, jalapeño (leave out seeds if you don’t want it too spicy), oregano, cumin, black pepper and 2 teaspoons salt and stir for another minute. Pour in the vinegar and scrape any browned bits from bottom of pan with a wooden spoon. This is your sofrito.

3.       When the beans are cooked, discard the bay leaf. Remove and set aside the ham hock and let it cool. Transfer 1 cup of beans to small bowl, mash them into a paste with the back of a fork and return to the pot. Add the sofrito, then the sugar. Pull the meat from the ham hock, leaving behind any white sinew or gristle. Chop the ham into ½ inch pieces and return it to the bean pot.

4.       Stir the beans well and bring to a boil over medium heat, then lower to a simmer and cook, uncovered, for 20 minutes or so, skimming any foam from the top. Taste for salt and serve with white rice. Serves 8-10

The above recipe was adapted for Times readers from “Tastes Like Cuba” by Eduardo Machado and Michael Domitrovich.

(In celebration of mother's day, I am copying below a brief essay that I wrote a few years ago and based on events that occured in 1971. Sometimes, as in this example, what is fundamental is clear---a human right and a right action. My daughter Karin carries the middle name Lydia to honor the woman described).

As a Peace Corps volunteer I used to commute on horseback through tropical forests, in the shadow of a conical volcano, to the village of Las Pilas, Nicaragua, where I worked with rural women on health-education and community-development projects. Lydia—a small indigenous woman, sun-baked and wrinkled beyond her forty-seven years—taught me all about life in Las Pilas. I’d dismount at her home of gray wood planks and dried palm grass, and her children would take care of my horse while she brought me to meetings, introduced me to neighbors, and told me about the needs of the village. Lydia always wore a dress that was ragged but clean and freshly pressed with an iron heated over an open fire. Upon our return to her house, she’d serve me heaping portions of black bean rice, tortillas, and fried plantains and a tall glass of coffee made from beans roasted in a clay pot.

The town had no source of potable water, so villagers walked several miles each day down steep, muddy trails to the shores of Lake Nicaragua, where they bathed, washed their clothes on lava rocks, and filled tins with water for cooking and drinking. The burden of hauling water fell to the women and their barefoot children, who stayed home from school to attend to the chore. The water could be made safe only by boiling, which required the added labor of gathering wood, something few had time to do. I knew without asking that Lydia had boiled the water for the coffee she served me.

One afternoon, when I brought my horse to a halt at Lydia’s door, I found her standing at the center of a crowd of men and women, looking uncharacteristically agitated. She explained to me, with barely suppressed rage, that the patron who owned the land on both sides of the trail from Las Pilas to the lake had erected a wire fence across it, blocking the villagers’ path. To restore access to water, a young man from the village had cut the wires, and for this he had been arrested and taken to jail in the nearby town of Altagracia.

Lydia dug her sandaled feet into the dusty ground and turned to the crowd. “I may be poor and meant to be poor,” she said, her voice trembling, “but I am a human being, and I have my rights!” She waved her arm, and the crowd moved toward a dilapidated bus set to leave for Altagracia, where they would demand a hearing by the mayor.

By sundown the prisoner had been released, and access to water—such as it was—had been restored. Lydia showed me the power of even one small person taking a stand.

 Published in the Readers Write column of The Sun Magazine in response to the writing prompt “Fences,” Issue 404, August 2009

The red chair on the front cover of Lost and Found in Cuba has sat prominently in the living room of my psyche since I first saw the image among Shawn’s Davis’ photographs of Havana. For me, the weary plastic of the seat and the low angle at which Shawn shot the photo suggest a child's eye view  of the 1950s. I am transported back to when I was a mere child, Fidel still had a lot of hair, Sputnick was circling the earth (did it have a dog in it?), and Communism and Cuba were merged as twin evils in the national consciousness (a primitive idea that most of us—but apparently not our government-- have outgrown).

I was thrilled when Shawn agreed to let his photos be used in the cover design (created by Go! Creative in Kensington, Maryland). Four photos of his are used on the front and back covers, and I'd love to hear what associations readers have to his images. If you like the shock of gorgeous color in Red Chair, you might also love his Blue Car which hangs in our Yellow Springs home. 

Yesterday, at Shawn's house in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC, we celebrated our collaboration. His sister Sara took the picture of the two of us that appears below. Joining us for wine and watermelon and book signing were Shawn's partner Richard, Mavis Anderson of the Latin America Working Group, and a group of Shawn and Richard's friends. Many were former Peace Corps Volunteers which was fitting, since Shawn and I originally met when we were both doing work for the WorldView Magazine of the National Peace Corps Association.

I've never blogged before, though I imagine that, like virginity, mine is an innocence that can only be lost once. I'm ready.

First copies of Lost and Found in Cuba arrived at my door only yesterday, so the "book" that has inhabited my mind and twinkled in the pixels of my computer screen for the past eight years has only been accessible to touch for twenty-four hours. As author, the materialization of thought into symbolic language and the object of a book is precious mystery. Removing the first copy from the carton and feeling the weight of it in my hand dispelled any doubt I had about the magic of books and the satisfaction of writing (or is it the satisfaction of having written?). Now, ironically, the very physicalness of the book provokes me to want to stretch in a new direction: to find written voice beyond ink on paper. An e-voice.

Through your comments and responses as you read book or blog, I hope that you, my readers, will join me in reflecting on the themes that thread through the book and that seem to have found permanent lodging in the living room of my psyche--- Cuba of course, but also human rights, mental health, and the challenge of living joyfully while tethered to finite bodies and a planet that needs all the best we can give.

Whenever I feel a blog coming on, I will post---perhaps every week or two, though I can't know for sure; for a while I'll have to listen for the rhythm. I invite you to join me in this oh-so-21st-century version of writerly conversation.