The Sweetness of Memory

The Sweetness of Memory: Sugarcane and the Roots That Bind Us

By J. Adrian Betancourt

There are certain moments in life when something small opens a much bigger door. A smell, a taste or a familiar gesture. Suddenly, without warning, the present gives way to the past, and you find yourself standing in two places at once.  That happened to me recently in my backyard.

About a year ago, I had the chance to ride the Sugar Express, a vintage rail car that took our Leadership Florida group through the sugarcane fields of Palm Beach County. At the end of the tour, each of us was handed a few cut stalks of sugarcane. It was a simple gesture, the kind of thing many people might take home as a souvenir and forget about a few days later.  But, sensing an opportunity, I concocted other plans.

Maybe it was because of my Cuban heritage. Maybe it was because sugarcane, or “caña,” as we call it, already meant something to me that went beyond agriculture or nostalgia. Whatever the reason, I brought those stalks home and planted them in my yard.  I did not know then how much would grow from that small decision.

Over time, the cane took root and rose, quietly and steadily, along an old fence in my backyard.  Hidden behind our grouping of birdfeeders, the crop went largely unnoticed; our eyes and interest drawn instead to the crimson-red cardinals, playful parakeets and blustering blue jays that would fight for positioning on the feeders, eager to crack open the sunflower seeds my wife had spent a small fortune on.  If anything, we found the drab looking sugarcane stalks in the background inconsistent and incompatible with the spectacular avian show taking place in the foreground.  But we left it there to continue growing; too lazy or otherwise busy to remove it, if nothing else.

Then, on a sunny morning not long ago, with my wife and daughters nearby, I finally harvested the crop, cut the cane and began peeling it back.  The moment I did, I was no longer just a man in his backyard. I was also a little boy again, standing beside my grandfather, Abu.

I could see his large, weathered hands as clearly as if he were right there in front of me. He had shown me exactly how to peel the outer layer, how to break the stalk into manageable pieces, how to chew it the right way to release the sweet juice without swallowing the tough fibers. At the time, it just felt like one of those small things a grandfather teaches a grandson. Only later do you realize that what looked simple was actually sacred.

Because he was not just showing me how to eat sugarcane. He was passing something down. Culture, memory, tradition... and a link back to the country and life he had lost when he was forced to flee his native land.  When I bit into that fresh cane in my backyard, the taste hit me instantly: sweet, raw, unmistakable. Guarapo. And with that sweetness came a flood of memory and a connection to something far greater.

My grandfather has been gone for many years now, taken too soon by cancer. I have missed him through every season of my life. But in that moment, he did not feel far away. He felt present. Not in some abstract or sentimental sense, but in a real one. His memory was alive in the motion of my hands, in the taste on my tongue, and in the fact that my own children were now watching me do what he had once shown me to do.

That, to me, is one of the most powerful things about family traditions. They collapse time. They remind us that the people we love never fully leave us when we carry their lessons forward.  And this one runs especially deep for me.

Sugarcane is wrapped up in my Cuban heritage in a way that is hard to overstate. It is not just a plant. It is history, identity, labor, hardship, pride, and survival. It tells a story about where we come from and about the generations of people whose hands worked the land, cut the cane, and built lives out of struggle and endurance. It also connects me to Florida, where agriculture – and sugarcane – still shape so much of our landscape and economy, even if many people barely notice it as they drive by.

That may be part of why this moment stayed with me.  We live in a world that trains us to notice the loud, the polished and the immediate. We are quick to admire the finished product and slow to appreciate the roots. We overlook the fields, the labor and the quiet corners where life, memory and meaning take hold. And yet that is often where the real blooming happens.  Not in the spotlight, but in the margins. Not in grand gestures, but in ordinary acts repeated across generations.

As my daughters tried the sugarcane for themselves – laughing a little, unsure at first, reacting to the stringy texture and then smiling as the sweetness came through – I realized I was watching something more than a family moment. I was watching a handoff.  Not through a speech, book or screen; but through experience, presence and taste.

In a time when so much of life feels rushed, filtered and disconnected from the physical world, moments like that matter. They anchor us. They remind us that some of the most important things in life cannot be downloaded, outsourced or scrolled past. They have to be planted. They have to be tended. They have to be shared.

A stick of sugarcane is a simple and humble thing. But in the right moment, in the right hands, it can become something far greater.  It can become a story, a lesson and a beautiful memory. And, if we’re paying attention, a reminder that the sweetest things in life are rarely the ones we buy, but the ones we grow, together.