Michael wanted to look at his old neighborhood, Rogers Park, so we drove around for awhile. I like the cold-weather architecture of Chicago, the fat, dark, brick apartment buildings with their broad, hospitable front stoops, their sturdy ornamentation. Michael pointed out the window where he used to look out as a boy to see if his friends had gathered in the school playground close by, and the corner where he got knocked down by some gentile kids for wearing his yamulke home from Yeshiva. I noticed a lot of store signs in Spanish, caught a glimpse through a window of a Cuban flag on the wall of an apartment where Michael’s neighbors once lived.

Twenty years from now, a Cuban American will probably be driving around those streets grumbling at how much the neighborhood has changed.

It has been twenty years and then some. I wonder what flags are displayed now in the homes of folks in Rogers Park, what languages are being spoken on the streets.