Make yourself at home

HAVANA – “Come in and make yourself at home.” That’s how we welcome visitors in Cuba, without worrying about the economic situation. “Fondly offer what you have,” my grandmother used to say.

Her neighborhood friends always came to my house to see the “soaps” on TV and to share the occasional gossip. It was the same with my father’s friends and baseball. “You can leave your child here; I have lunch,” my mother would tell my friend’s mom on summer days when we never stopped playing.

It has always been so. Even in the hard years during the 90s crisis, when many doors were shut and the rebar separated some homes from the outside world, there was never a lack of coffee to share with the neighbors.

Blackouts could not obscure what was light and life went on, nevertheless, with the laughter that saves us. Where there was a car battery and a lit light bulb; or a small battery-operated radio to listen to the TV soap; or an outdoor hallway with fresh air and good conversation; people continued getting together like magnets.

There are homes, uniquely Cuban, where discretion is extinguished, where modesty is a rare unknown hue, where borders do not exist; repeated in every neighborhood, in every province. It does not matter if you’re from Havana or Jigüaní: “the people’s house,” a kind of social club where people start their days and finish their nights…