To many older Americans, and especially those living in South Florida, Cuban immigration begins on page one of 1961, when the U.S. opened it's generous arms to welcome a mass exodus from Cuba. However, there is a slice of pre-1961 South Florida "Cuban" life that I dusted off and brought to the pages of "From Cuba With Love, & Back."The book is an endearing recollection of a Cuban family growing up in Miami, Florida. The antebellum days of fifteen years prior to the 1959 Cuban revolution and the mass exodus of 1961. "From Cuba With Love, & Back," depicts the softer, gentler sound and pace of the few Cubans who were already living in America.My parents did not pack political bags to come to America. They packed a suitcase with hopes and dreams. In 1945, my mother and father arrived in the United States, with the hope of finding steady work and the basic necessities to raise a loving family and provide for their children. For fifteen years, our home, neighborhood and Miami was nothing more than an idyllic landscape. Suddenly and unlike all the previous New Year's, when we as kids, would light firecrackers on dimly-lit Miami streets, a greater burst of light exploded on the streets of Havana on January 1, 1959! Cuba was undergoing a political overhaul. So too, our homes in quiet and quaint Miami, would soon thereafter become forums of intense discussions as only many Cubans know how to "discuss," by yelling! Miami would never again be quiet.