Category: Miami Stories

When I was just 6 months old my parents moved to Miami and rented a house across from a beach on Collins Avenue. They could actually open the front door of their house and see the Atlantic Ocean, but this beautiful view almost cost us our lives. Three months later a powerful Category 4 unnamed hurricane made landfall on September 17, 1947 at Port Everglades.

My parents were raised in New York City and were unwise to the dangers of tropical cyclones, so they elected to remain in the rented house; that is, until the Atlantic Ocean came “a-knocking.” My mother told me that when the ocean came through the front door my father decided it was time to leave. My parents grabbed me and my 4-year-old brother and tried to make it to the safety of the mainland in the family car.

When the sedan finally succumbed to the rising tidal surge halfway across the Venetian Causeway all they could do was huddle and hope for the best. An uncle on the mainland must have been more hurricane-smart and realized that one of his six brothers was probably in trouble, so he jumped into a 2 ½-ton truck they used for the family tile business and came looking for us. He possible saved our lives as my dad’s car was being battered by waves coming over the low bridge’s railings, according to my mother.

This experience had such a profound effect on my father that when he decided to build a house for his family a few years later, he used topographical maps and searched for a lot with a very high elevation. His final choice was near Southwest 23 Street and 14th Avenue and has an elevation of 36 feet above sea level. This ridge is part of the Miami Rock Ridge and is called Silver Bluff.

The fine house my father built rested slightly more than a half mile from Biscayne Bay and one mile from the first bridge of Rickenbacker Causeway, which were both in easy bike range for a young boy. This close proximity to Biscayne Bay would have a profound effect on me for the rest of my life.

At that time one could fish behind Mercy Hospital on the seawall for trout and jacks, or head over to the Rickenbacker bridges in winter for snook, loads of mackerel, bluefish, bonefish, tarpon, and big jacks. We even caught snook in the canals in the Grove and assorted fish on the bridge to “Fair Island,” before it was developed and renamed “Grove Isle.”

When I was just 3 years old my father died of natural causes and my mother had to struggle to survive. Before I was even 10 years old I took advantage of being a child of a single parent and became a free-ranging youth that ventured as far as his bike and legs would take him.

I took up fishing in earnest, and by the time I was 14 I fished in the summers all through the night, mostly solo since none of my friends shared this kind of freedom. (I leaned early on how to defend myself from pedophiles and bullies.) I was a late bloomer and did not learn how to swim until I was in 9th grade. One year later I bought a used Scuba outfit with my paper route money and started diving under all of the Rickenbacker bridges.

By age 15, I had complete usage of my mother’s ‘55 Chevy, and was ranging all the way down to the middle Keys to fish and dive. I lived a very adventurous life and often slept in her car next to bridges in the Keys, since my mother had a friend who drove her anywhere she wanted to go.

I lived to fish and dive and this pastime stayed with me for the rest of my life. In the 1950s, one really didn’t need a boat in South Florida to locate quality game fish. I caught tarpon, snook, trout, bonefish, snapper, bluefish and even grouper all from land or bridges. Some of these fish even earned me weight citations in the Miami Metropolitan Fishing Tournament before I graduated from high school, and still hang in my den.

Miami was truly a paradise for me over a half century ago. I now look how young kids are practically sequestered inside their houses out of parental fear. I always thank my lucky stars that I was fortunate to have those early experiences instead of being cooped up in front of a TV or computer as today’s children often are.

It was the end of the first week of June, 1963. I had just finished third grade at Shenandoah Elementary School and I was looking forward to summer vacation. Papi was a third-year resident in neurosurgery at Jackson Memorial Hospital; he was on call 36 out of every 48 hours.

Neither my mother nor my father was particularly young: Papi had been 45 when I’d been born; and Mami, almost 42. I was their only child: their hija consentida (pampered daughter).

In 1963, Mami had just turned 50. As for Papi, both his salary, at $219 per month, and his age, at 53, were “record-setting,” according to Mami. “He was the oldest resident in JMH’s history.”

My sweet natured, shy – yet gregarious – father had befriended many of the staff at the Jackson. A tall, lanky, bow-tie clad, pipe-smoking Tennessean became his special friend. He called my father, “Fred.”

Basil Yates, who figured in our lives for many years to come, came to our financial rescue. Estábamos muy apretados: we didn’t have much money. One day Yates asked his friend Fred if he had enough money to take care of his family. Papi very honestly responded, no. Yates reached into his pocket and pulled out $200.

With Yates’ generosity, we were able to move from the kindly, shabby tenement, “El Vanta Koor” (Vanta Court) to a better apartment building several blocks away. Not only were we to move, but – thanks again to Dr. Yates – we were able to spend a month on Miami Beach that July. We rented an apartment in the Amsterdam Palace Hotel.

There was no air-conditioning, but that’s the way Mami wanted it. Las brisas del mar – the ocean breezes – provided plenty of cross-ventilation. When Papi could join us, he was able to enjoy the alcove that fronted the balcony, right smack in the middle of the second floor of the Amsterdam Palace.

For my part, I played among the statues and fountains on the first floor, ceaselessly rode up and down the elevator, and spent as much time in the ocean as I could. Sometimes I went swimming twice a day. Mami liked to take me in the early mornings, when the sandbanks were built up, and we were able to walk out into the ocean as far as we dared. I became vey tanned that summer.

There’s a picture of me at a party, sitting next to Papi, where I’m muy bronceada y rosada, very bronzed and rosy, indeed. I’m wearing a white shift with big roses on it. I’m shyly looking down at my hands and Papi is glancing over at me. This is the way I remember myself from the summer of 1963.

Late summer found us in the new apartment. For three years, I had all but stumbled out of bed to get to school, as “El Vanta Koor” was located next to Shenandoah Elementary. Now I had to walk a few blocks.

As my English had improved tremendously, I fully expected to find myself in an English-only fourth grade classroom. To my horror, I found myself being directed back to my third grade bilingual classroom! It turned out a number of us Cubanitos were in the same predicament. We soon found out we were not being held back – we just needed a little extra “tweaking.” I remember not finding it so strange after a while.

In the old days, walking from Calle Ocho on Southwest Tenth Street Road, one was able to run smack into Shenandoah Elementary. All three floors of it, with its Mediterranean tiled roof and graceful arches.

Passing underneath these arches on Nov. 29, 1960, I embarked upon my first grade experience in the United States. I didn’t speak one word of English. I remember my first grade teacher, Mrs. Morvil, speaking to me in English. Looking up at her, quizzically, I responded en español. And that’s pretty much how it stayed, all year.

At the beginning, I wrote a few letters to my teacher in Cuba, asking her to send me my textbooks. And then I didn’t open my mouth, to the point that I almost failed first grade. I had learned enough to know that an F was a bad grade, and I had received six of them. Somehow, I was passed on to second grade.

The first six weeks of second grade were pretty bad. Then something happened: a small group of us were handed over to Mrs. Bustillo, a Cuban teacher who spoke enough English that she was able to teach us in both languages. I did much better with her, ending up the year with my lowest grade being a C in Physical Education. And, oh, how I hated P.E.

On the other hand, I didn’t fight learning English, any more. I did really well: I became the spelling champion in our class, and runner-up in the entire grade. I actually remember breathing out, “hand-ker-chief,” in spurts: that did the job.

Third grade was my year of glory at Shenandoah: the Spelling Bee, and the Hungarian Gypsy Dance.

Two Hungarians were the obvious choices to lead this gypsy dance out from underneath the central arch, under the lights one May evening in 1963. Nicky Perusina and I were all dolled up in our red velvet and gold-trimmed jackets. He wore black pants, and a long black bow fringed with gold tassels. I wore a white skirt with red and green stitching, a flower-trimmed headdress, and carried a little bouquet of flowers in my hands. I even got to wear makeup – I felt so grown up.

I DO remember being nervous, and trying to remember on what foot I was supposed to skip out, first. Most importantly, I remember telling myself, “Don’t trip. Don’t trip.”

Well, I didn’t trip. We all had a good time. And I became known as The Hungarian Dancer.

Although I was born in Miami, I left when I was a couple months old and did not return until I was almost seven.

My father got hired as a pilot for Pan American Airlines, but when they cancelled his training class, he took a job for Dominicana Airlines, based in Santa Domingo. When the political climate in the Dominican Republic became too dangerous, my family moved – first to Warner Robbins, Georgia, then to Wayne, Michigan, where my Dad flew cargo for Zantop Airlines.

My sister Kelley was born there, but his plan had always been to move back to Miami, where his parents lived. When he got hired with National Airlines (“Fly Me”), we moved back to Miami and my parents built a house in Gables-By-The-Sea. My sister Elise was a baby and my Mom was pregnant with my brother John, when we moved into our new house in 1967.

I celebrated my seventh birthday with my new classmates, at Parrot Jungle. I attended Silver Bluff, Sylvania Heights, and Pinecrest elementaries before landing at Epiphany School in the third grade.

Living in Gables-By-The-Sea, I grew up fishing and swimming in the canal behind my house, exploring the swamp across the street and going on outings on our family’s boat. I also organized musical extravaganzas for my father’s annual 4th of July birthday parties. I once water skied from Matheson Hammock all the way to Elliot Key. My father was so proud of this accomplishment, he bragged about it to my ballet teacher, Mr. Millenoff. My strict Russian instructor was none too thrilled, claiming it would ruin my legs for ballet.

After Epiphany, I attended Our Lady of Lourdes Academy and was a cheerleader for Christopher Columbus High School. Friday nights, after football games, we would hang out at Lums in Westchester, or Little Caesars in the Gables. During this time, my parents and sisters were very active in the Miami Ski Club, competing in water-ski competitions and even going to Nationals.

After graduating from Lourdes in 1977, I went to Florida State University in Tallahassee. After two years, undecided on a major, I came back home and got a job as a flight attendant with Air Florida. In 1980, National Airlines was purchased by Pan American Airlines, so my Dad ended up flying for Pan Am after all.

My first route when I got hired (since I was French-qualified) was Port-Au-Prince/Santo Domingo, so I ended up returning to the city where I had lived as a baby. I flew that line for almost a year. I was flying into Washington, D.C. on January 13, 1982, just as another Air Florida plane crashed into the Potomac. We aborted our landing and landed in Boston, but had to return to Washington the next morning to pick up our passengers.

I later flew with one of the flight attendants (and one of the few survivors) of that flight. It turned out her stepmother had hired me for Air Florida.

Miami in the “Miami Vice” eighties was glamorous, fast-paced, and a little scary. Still, I enjoyed going to clubs such as: Cats, Suzanne’s, The Mutiny, and Faces in the Grove. One night, while at Biscayne Babies, my sisters and I even met Senator Ted Kennedy. With Air Florida, I traveled to London, Paris, Zurich, Frankfurt, Brussels, Stockholm, and even Havana.

Air Florida went bankrupt in 1984, the same year I got married. I then worked at my family’s nursing home, The Floridean, as a secretary. I worked in the office with my grandmother Julia Rice, who was the Administrator and my sister Kelley, who was the activities director.

My family was featured in a MacArthur Milk commercial, since we had four generations (from my grandmother to her great-grandchildren) who had “grown up on MacArthur” in Miami.

I also did some extra work (“Miami Vice,” movies and commercials) to make some extra money. I finished my A.A. at Miami Dade when my daughter A.J. was a baby and got my B.A. at F.I.U. in 1994. Getting a degree with three young children (Brad, A.J. and Christopher), a husband, and a house to maintain was a considerable challenge but I made the Dean’s List and graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in Liberal Arts.

Like many other Miamians, we survived Hurricane Andrew. At the time it hit, we lived in Mangowood, very close to the strongest winds recorded. Our neighborhood was practically unrecognizable, without a leaf left on the trees. In the days and weeks following the hurricane, we got to know our neighbors very well, taking turns grilling food from our freezers for dinner, and helping each other out.

Our children, who attended Coral Reef Elementary, started about a month late with the National Guard escorting them to their first day of school. Although it took more than a year, we re-built our house and it was better than ever.

My husband and I moved to Tallahassee in 1996, in search of a slower pace of life. I decided to return to Miami four years later, in order to spend time with my dad – Butch Rice – who had been diagnosed with lung cancer. I moved back on July 3, 2001, just in time for his annual 4th of July Birthday Bash.

I got divorced in January of the next year, and my father passed away in October. I was very glad I had that year and a half to spend with my dad.

I continued my education and got my Master’s in screenwriting at University of Miami in 2003, so I now consider myself a “Cane.” I love attending UM football games with my husband Zeke (also a UM graduate), just as my father did (although no longer at the Orange Bowl).

I also enjoy entertaining, traveling, photography and all kinds of writing – from blogging to screenwriting. I edit and write articles for The Pulse, the Floridean newsletter, where my sister Kelley is now the executive director.

I play tennis on several teams and enjoy going for runs around my neighborhood, which is right down the street from Epiphany and Lourdes. All three of my grown children live in Miami and I am now stepmother to three daughters – Lauren, Rachel and Emma.

I love the energy of Miami – the diversity of its residents and the variety of activities it offers. Miami is always changing and offering new opportunities and I hope to embrace them all.

Back during the mid-1950s, my parents migrated from rural Georgia, with five young kids in tow. Seeking a better life with more opportunity for their children, they sold most of their possessions, left family and friends behind and struck out for the big city.

Getting to Miami was quite a journey for us, with many stops along the way. But there was no doubt that our destination was Miami.

We arrived during the summer of 1955. For an African-American family, there were still many limitations in place at that time, barriers that would literally take years to come down. As young kids, we didn’t really understand it all.

My parents would often sit us down and try to explain to us about the harsh realities of life during those times. My father would tell us stories of his life and the many things he’d gone through as a young black man living in the Deep South. Now, living in this strange new city, they kept us very close, not wanting us to ever fall into harm’s way. In spite of this, they were determined to make the most of our new life.

We moved in with my mother’s older sister in Coconut Grove, where my aunt Irene lived in a small duplex just off Grand Avenue. We were all packed into this little two-bedroom duplex, and my aunt made pallets for us kids to sleep on in the living room. It was like a slumber party every night; we had so much fun.

I was third from the oldest, barely 5 years old, but I have such vivid memories of those days. Everything was a new adventure for me. I’d never seen a palm tree before, and I remember seeing my uncle open a coconut for the very first time. My aunt used to make the most delicious coconut candy. Some evenings we would walk up to Grand Avenue just to watch the traffic and see the hustle and bustle of the city.

We soon moved into our own apartment, just off U.S.1 in Coconut Grove. By that time, my father had landed a job working for General Tire Company in North Miami Beach.

My mother was attending nursing school at that time. With five small kids at home, that was not an easy task. My mom did eventually graduate and began working at Mercy Hospital.

There were times when my dad’s car would break down and my mom had to pick him up from work. She would let us kids tag along just for the ride. For us, driving down Northeast 163rd Street was like touring a vacation paradise.

I remember seeing the tourists walking around and frolicking in the pool at the Howard Johnson’s right at the cloverleaf interchange. There was a McDonald’s just down the street (that McDonald’s is still there) and sometimes mother would stop in for a rare treat.

I began first grade, with great reluctance, at George Washington Carver School. I hated school and would have preferred to stay home with my mom watching Captain Kangaroo or Popeye’s Playhouse.

Over the next few years we moved a few more times, until we were settled a bit further north, in an area called West Little River. My parents purchased the most beautiful and spacious home (at least to us) – three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a Florida room. We were in heaven.

We invited friends over and our cousins would sleep over sometimes. By that time, my older sister had married and moved out. I was in middle school by the mid-1960s and had made a few friends, and those relationships lasted many years after high school. I’ve known my closest and dearest friend since second grade.

By then, school was a lot of fun, and I had some of the most wonderful teachers. I especially enjoyed the many field trips to so many exciting places in Miami – the Science Museum, Parrot Jungle, The Serpentarium, Tropical Hobbyland, Crandon Park Zoo and Miami Seaquarium, just to name a few.

My parents really never had a lot of money, but they did manage to give us the most memorable childhood. Thank goodness it didn’t take a lot of money to have a good time in those days. There was always something to look forward to.

We were rewarded with spending money for doing our chores and helping out around the house.

My sister and I would take the Number 25 bus all the way downtown to go shopping. That was such a fun ride. We’d have lunch at one of the dime stores like Woolworths or McCrory’s lunch counter. Those charbroiled cheeseburgers and root beer floats alone were worth the trip. Other times, we’d enjoy Saturday afternoons at Virginia Key Beach with a big picnic basket.

If there was a new movie out, my dad would load us all into the car and head to the drive-in theatre. We wore our pj’s and made our Jiffy Pop popcorn before leaving home. It was so wonderful back in those days with so much to do.

By 1969, I was a senior at Miami Central High and ready for graduation. I registered at Miami-Dade Community College North campus and started work for the telephone company, a job that lasted more than 25 years. Both of my parents and three of my siblings have now passed on, my mom most recently.

Today, my husband and I are still enjoying life to the fullest here in Miami. More than 50 years ago, my parents wanted to provide a better life with more opportunity for their children in Miami, and I must say that was accomplished, many times over.

Today, I enjoy cooking big meals and having my children and grandchildren over to visit. That says it all. Life is great because the best time is now.

It feels like a high speed chase west on the ironically named Dolphin Expressway, veering south on what follows as a seamless string of highway on the “Palmetto,” the Don Shula expressway, and the Ronald Reagan Turnpike, all certifiable assaults on the nervous system.

I pass hurling arcs of overpasses and barrier walls painted in something vaguely resembling sandy or sunset colors. After the Walmart /Home Depot/BJs/ Outlet Center super-section in Homestead, I hook onto U.S.1 southbound and I’m off the highway, in Florida City, closer, at least, to what will become familiar territory for the next month. This drive is happening in May 2014 when I spent the month living in Everglades National Park as part of the Artist in Residence in the Everglades (AIRIE) program.

On the way down, I travel the familiar traverse on State Road 9336, past produce distribution centers, dollar stores, Mexican restaurants, and a church with a gigantic cross reclining on a grassy man-made berm.

As I near the park, the vista opens up at Southwest 192nd Avenue with wide agricultural fields. I can smell the fertilizer. I continue south, turning west at the state prison, past the well-kept migrant workers’ housing, and a small nondescript house with a large driveway that becomes a lively taqueria on the weekends. The variety continues past the Benito Juarez Park, a cluster of orchid growers, agricultural land for sale and a straight shot west across the C-111 (a canal originally built in the 1960s to transport Aerojet moon rocket engines so big they had to be barged). In a few minutes I arrive at the offices at the Ernest Coe Visitor Center to check into the cabin I will call home during the month of May.

My cabin quickly becomes home base after mopping, unpacking and re-arranging of furniture. It’s a piece of a larger housing settlement for park employees, built as part of “Mission 66,” a federal program begun in 1956 to improve the buildings in the national park system after the post-war visitor boom. The project introduced the concept of the visitor center, building the mid-century structures at Flamingo and the observation tower in Shark Valley.

I set up a field office with maps, a coffee machine, and a bottle of bourbon. I dine outdoors for the first two weeks, before the rains start and the mosquitoes emerge with ferocity. I continue the domestication and colonization of my immediate surroundings by setting up a studio in the large screened porch called the “chickee,” using the long string of picnic tables for painting, collaging, and journal-keeping.

Portions of the land-bound park have been domesticated as well, keeping us people in check, by making this subtropical nature preserve accessible through paved roads, cleared trails, and lovely laid-out paths such as those at Anhinga, Gumbo Limbo, and Mahogany Hammock. These carved out areas of accessible nature are places I frequent, and they feel part of my extended “house” in the Everglades.

But most of the park is water. Days I spend on a 24-foot flat boat, in the western boundary of the Everglades via the back-country waters, were glorious ways of experiencing a landscape untethered from the pace of the other coast. I saw rare orchids and animals. I learned that Martha Stewart laundry bags are a favorite for catching live pythons, and about the difficulties of detecting the invasive species with conservation drones (in part, because their body heat is close to the ambient temperature).

The trips were also archaeological tours, past ancient Tequesta and Calusa mounds, homesteaded settlements, factory remains, boat wrecks, shards of what might be pottery, and the hydrology stations themselves.

Tamiami Trail is my route to exploring another network of national, state and local preserves. It’s effectively a dam blocking the natural freshwater flow to the Everglades. At the time I’m there, a one-mile portion has been recently elevated to allow water flow as part of the restoration initiative. The road’s bridging, along with the canal structures and air-boat vendors, are all a part of the constructed landscape.

I’d originally intended to write more about the sublime experiences from within the park, too many to name — things like the bright lime green color of the coastal prairie in late May, or looking for meteor showers at 2 a.m. in Taylor Slough, or the slithering landscape of black snakes and mangrove root systems on the Bear Lake trail, where I was swarmed the first day after the rains started because I didn’t have a clue how bad the mosquitos could get (I counted 95 bites that night).

But my time weaving in and out of the designated park area made me acutely aware of the human intervention that allowed me to navigate these parts, and how we were alternately destroying, preserving, or trying to reconstitute this ecosystem.

My proximity to this part of the Urban Development Boundary gave me a more immediate sense of how the park was pressed, controlled, and restricted from every which way. Wilderness here is a construct, a negotiation between a real need for these sacred places of refuge for all sorts of creatures (including the human sort) with the political and economic imperatives required to make it happen.

I had taken countless photos of the landscapes that never matched up to the experience of being there. Yet I came to see my seemingly boring and repetitive pictures as historic glimpses into this particular version of the Everglades. Past versions included homes to ancient Indians, and later, 19th Century homesteaders. Previous iterations were experienced and impacted by loggers, speculators, mid-century vacationers, and invasive species of all sorts that had become native.

Ten thousand years ago, it was land still under the ocean. It is a landscape that has experienced all sorts of system collapse, but exists in a form that still protects and connects to some deeper part of ourselves.

It was the depths of the Depression, 1937, when my parents Manny and Grace LaCalle pulled into Miami with their two girls in the back seat of the car.

After many jobs and homes in five other states, my father had an offer from Schenley Distillers. They shipped all their belongings and drove to Miami from New York.

He began as a window trimmer, decorating the windows of liquor stores. His hard work was rewarded by promotion to salesman and eventually he was offered the position of sales manager for the state of Florida. It would mean relocating to Jacksonville.

After thinking about it and talking it over with my mother, he realized that people save all their lives so they can retire to Miami. He was here now, why would he leave? He refused the promotion and was never offered another.

Summers in pre-air-conditioned Miami were so hot – especially if you were used to New York weather – that our mom would take us to NYC on the Silver Meteor as soon as school let out for the summer.

By 1940, the LaCalles had saved enough to buy a home. Sts. Peter and Paul Church was new and proposed to build a school, but my parents had experienced similar proposals in New York where the schools were not started for 20 years, so they built their home across the street from Coral Way Elementary School. The following year, Sts. Peter and Paul School opened and my sister and I had to walk more than a quarter of a mile each way to school.

The following year, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The family heard the news on the car radio on a sunny Florida Sunday as we were driving around the Air Base in Opa-locka.

Since my father fell into a very small demographic, too young for World War I and too old for World War II, he and my mother volunteered in Civil Defense, him as an air-raid warden and her as a switchboard operator, as she had experience from working for Bell Telephone.

1941 was also the year that a song my grandfather, Joseph LaCalle, composed rose to number one on the Hit Parade. This song, “Amapola” (Spanish for poppy), had been used by the New York school system for teaching purposes and was included in “The Three Tenors Concert,” the best-selling classical recording of all time. The Three Tenors liked it so much they recorded it in their second concert. Andrea Bocelli also sang it as the first number on his recording “Amore.”

My sister, Dolores, and I attended Gesu High School in downtown Miami because of a shortage of teachers at Sts. Peter and Paul School during the war years. Gesu High was torn down subsequently to pave a parking lot, Miami style.

I studied at Barry College after graduating from Gesu High School and Dolores attended a nursing school in West Palm Beach.

After completing 30 years with the City of Miami, during which time I was the legal administrator to the city attorney, I entered a 15-year career as a professional actress. Most recently, I was a cast member of the movie, “Bart Got a Room.”

Dolores’ family moved to the north part of the state and now live in the Mount Dora area.

My daughter presently resides in Ft. Lauderdale after raising a family in Rochester, NY. One of my sons is an electrician in Sarasota, FL. My other son is an instructor with Miami-Dade Transit; his wife, who was born in Cuba, is the operations manager of a local company.

n 1963, I made my first trip to Miami.

I had just graduated from college and was invited to visit by the man who would become my husband, Richard Rosichan. At the time, he lived in Bay Heights with his parents, Arthur and Claire Rosichan. I was young and had lived my whole life as a northerner. I could not believe my eyes when I saw my first Miami house, filled with beautiful paintings and tasteful décor — the “marble” floors, the den filled from ceiling to floor with books, the tropical patio and what I perceived with my northern eyes as exotic landscaping.

Over time, and as our relationship became more serious, I returned to Miami and was introduced to neighbors and family friends. When we got married, I was teaching school in Buffalo, New York, and Richard quickly finished his degree at the University of Buffalo. For the next eight years, and no matter where we were living, studying and working, we spent every winter vacation in Miami.

My favorite event was going to the sumptuous New Year’s day celebration at a neighbor’s home just down the street. Upon our arrival, we were always handed a glass of homemade eggnog, which in my memory is still the best I have ever had.

My in-laws had no pool, but they used to rent a cabana at the Executive House in Miami Beach. I loved going there and felt like a “fancy” lady. It is hard to believe in this day and age, but when we went swimming, Claire always reminded me to keep my face to the sun so I could go back north with a healthy tan.

Less than 10 years and two children later (Amy and Lori), Richard and I moved to Miami (no more “face in the sun”). By that time, my mother-in-law was suffering from a serious illness. We didn’t want to inflict two active toddlers on our in-laws, so while we were waiting to close on our house, we lived in various places, including an efficiency apartment and two weeks at the KOA campground in Homestead.

While waiting to establish ourselves, we started a small business — Rider-Driver Exchange — a service to connect young folks who needed a ride up north with a driver who needed assistance with driving. We were quite successful in getting people together, putting up signs on a community bulletin board in Coconut Grove, but we had a cash-flow problem. We rarely got paid!

We finally settled in the Buena Vista neighborhood, just north of the Design District. In those days, most of the stores in the Design District were closed to the public. In order to get in, you had to either go with or be sent by a decorator. Richard and I had to be content with just looking. The neighborhood was quiet and sedate, with large two-story houses, but that did not last.

Years after we moved, the neighborhood was revitalized, the Design District became fashionable and open to all, with interesting decorating stores, restaurants and boutiques. During our Buena Vista years, we established new careers, Richard working as a research consultant and I working in the business center of a prominent law firm.

In 1983, we moved to Alton Road in Miami Beach. The city was in decline, and we were lucky to buy at just the right time. In those days, the median was filled with flowers, and the golf course was beautifully landscaped with more flowers. Sometimes wedding parties would stop to have pictures taken with the golf course as a backdrop.

Frequently, passers-by would stop and ask directions to a restaurant, and we were hard pressed as to how to direct them. There was the Villa Deli, a neighborhood institution, and Kim’s Chinese (both now gone), and Bella Napoli and Masters Pizza (still going). In the other direction was a Howard Johnson’s and, of course, Wolfie’s on Collins Avenue.

Lincoln Road was a wasteland, and Ocean Drive was in serious decay. Over time, of course, there was a dramatic turnaround, and the rest is history.

Each of these neighborhoods represents a thousand family dramas, comedic and dramatic, of our family’s life — young love, family growth, teenage turmoil, empty nest and now grandchildren. I have been truly blessed.

I’ve been trying to leave Miami for a long time now.

Miami was my home after I left Haiti. Creole was in every corner, familiar faces spilled out of supermarkets and Quick Marts, and botanicas haunted every jitney bus and crowded every small church between businesses. I felt at home, lakay as we say in Haiti.

I loved the symbiosis of Haitian and Latin culture, be it Cuban or Dominican, because our food and our body language, our passion and our mannerisms, in many ways mirror each other. Miami was a pilon, a mortar and pestle, and the people under the pestle were the ingredients that brought out flavor.

Miami started to lose that flavor when I lost my job during the recession and my mortgage went under. Thirty percent of residences foreclosed in my building. My morale took a big blow and suddenly, I’d had enough. Enough of the neighbor’s 7 a.m. music displacing the art on my walls, enough of the mother and son-in-law caught in a daily soap opera of Te voy a matar next door, and enough of the sour faces that old lady made every morning down in the lobby, waiting for me to ask her how she was feeling just so she could tell me her ailments.

I was tired of the angry letters that came in the mail from our disgruntled new resident who was angry at the association for “lying about the pet policy.” The elevator hadn’t been inspected since 2007, and I was tired of having to climb seven flights of stairs. I dreaded board meetings, where one of our residents, a mustached veteran, consistently interrupted with objections and motions that always led to physical fights and, most recently, required the presence of the condo-board attorney as well as the local police.

I dreaded the woman who thought she was doing us a favor by chain-smoking in the stairwell where we carried our groceries up and down up the steps, leaving cigarette butts in her wake. When I came home, or left for work, I tried to avoid the neighbor who never spoke a word to me but sat there at the entrance, smoking by the carton and staring straight ahead even when I greeted him. He, too, was angry with the condo board, and was plotting ways to sue them by forming a coalition of residents calling themselves “the justice seekers.”

I didn’t even want to take my dogs out, for fear of having my neighbor call me from his second-floor apartment. “Hey! Pssssssst! HEY!” Every time I looked up, I saw his silhouette behind the screened patio gesturing for me to join him for a drink, and throwing his hands up in the air, exasperated, when I refused.

Drunkards were in every corner outside, downing six packs of Keystone and smashing bottles of Corona against the ground in a kind of blind rage aimed at their own condition, leaving the shards on the asphalt for dogs to cut their paws. They urinated behind trees and squatted on the embankment of the canal to relieve themselves, with no regard for mangrove crabs and iguanas, or humans for that matter.

I avoided the man who pushed his obnoxious shi-tzu around in a shopping cart because he threw eggs at other people’s cars. When my neighbor two doors down insisted on bringing my dogs chicken bones from his dinner plate, his mouth and fingers sticky with sauce, I dreaded taking them but accepted the offering with a feeble “thank you.”

When I became pregnant and gave birth to my son, I sunk even deeper into a new darkness of post-partum depression. My neighbors saw me pregnant, and when my baby spent a month in intensive care, they all wanted to know what had happened. I avoided them even more. I wouldn’t open the door for anyone.

It was when my husband and I came back home with the baby that I finally noticed a change in our neighbors. Suddenly, we were Joseph and Mary harboring baby Jesus. My neighbors were the Wise Men, come to see him bearing gifts and cards, and smiles. There were baby tubs and mobiles, even strollers and bouncy chairs at our door. Suddenly, the neighbors I felt uneasy with were friends.

No. Suddenly, my neighbors became family.

The “justice seeker” greets me happily and now opens the door for me when he sees me coming crushed under the weight of grocery bags. The mustached meeting interrupter who gave us the silent treatment now addresses my husband with a “hello.” The letter-writer hasn’t mailed us manifestos threatening to call “Help Me Howard” in a while. Now, at the end of a long day when I rush home to see my baby’s face and kiss him, part of that longing includes a yearning for a waft of that Cuban coffee from my neighbor’s kitchen right before he stops by to offer me bones.

Yes, my building is the manger, and it feels like everyone has morphed overnight into benevolent creatures full of good will.

Or is it me who changed?

Perhaps it is this new love that opened me up to them. To letting them tickle my son’s toes, to lending them aluminum foil, to handing them holiday cards and dialing their family overseas when their eyesight fails them. They are family.

I’m working now, and my baby is healthy, and I spend less time thinking of moving away. Now, at least for a while, Miami is lakay. Miami is home.