I was sitting on the front stoop of our house at 3 p.m. as I did every day, watching and waiting for the man in "el carrito" to come. This was the government employee who drove by daily in a golf cart, and who eventually would carry a prized piece of paper -- our exit visas to leave Cuba to the land of opportunity just 90 miles away.

I was 6 years old. And this day, a beautiful spring day in Havana, the man drove by a bit slower, and stopped at our home.

We had a beautiful new home in one of Havana's pre-Castro swanky suburbs, Alta Habana. There was a large front yard and we sat on a swing on our front porch. When the man arrived and gave me the "piece of paper" I remember running through our neighbor's yards to look for my dad. Dad was playing dominoes at a house a few doors down, and I ran as fast as my 6-year-old stubby legs would carry me.

"Papi, papi! It is here!" I yelled.

The joy on my dad's face, and the sadness of leaving his beloved Cuba, is something I will never forget.

We went back to the house to tell Mom and Abuela Quina. Everyone was in shock; scared, elated, nervous. What would happen next was something that has forever defined who I am.

There were all sorts of rumors as to what would happen to you after you left Cuba, and while you were waiting for your exit. One rumor, however, was painfully true. The government treated you as a "traitor to the revolution;" imagine a 6-year-old traitor to the revolution! Nevertheless, the chain of events that would follow was very scary.

My mother ran an underground Catholic Church at our home, and through this involvement had befriended the local lady in charge of La Vigilancia. This is like a neighborhood watch program on steroids. In Castro's Cuba there are neighborhood groups called CDR's, which stand for the Orwellian-sounding Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. We Cubans, even the communist ones, are so dramatic!

Mom and the La Vigilancia lady were friends. Lolita was her name. Lolita was not really a communist, just an opportunist. She knew if she worked as a snitch for the government she would get better food rations and special privileges. But secretly, she was a closet Catholic working for a government that had banned religion.

Lolita called my mom to tell her, "Ondi, they are coming to inspect your house in two hours."

Imagine that, the home that your parents had purchased with their blood, sweat and tears was now going to be searched by soldiers for contraband. No, not guns or weapons, but in Castro's Cuba, food and clothing were considered contraband.

This was a real problem. You see, my grandmother Quina was a very prolific customer on the black market, so we always had lots of food, coffee, clothing and desserts. We knew that if the soldiers found these illegal delicacies of capitalism, our exit visas would be revoked and the adults would have been shipped to jail. So we sprung into action.

There is nothing more amazing than the Cuban spirit of "resolver" -- or literally, to resolve or get things done. The whole family got into the act. My baby sister, Regla, and I, my grandma, mom and dad started taking all the food that was not supposed to be there and threw it over our fence to our neighbors. Our neighbors, Dulce and Jose, were my parents' best friends and they won the jackpot that April day. For two hours we took as much out of our house as we could so when the soldiers came, everything would appear in order, lest we lose our prized visas.

Then the soldiers came. I was so scared, these tall, rough men going through our house, invading our privacy, rifling through my parents' clothes. I remember one soldier mocking my dad saying: "El Licensiado (lawyers in Cuba were called licensiados) has very nice clothes." They stole his fine suits and my mom's pearls. They eyed our furniture, they took some jewelry, and they were eyeing my mom in that weird way that turns your stomach to think of it.

What they did not know is that we had sent our good stuff over the fence to our neighbors, and that Mom had buried her good jewelry in the backyard. The pearls they took were fake. She would rather the worms eat the jewelry than the soldiers get their filthy hands on it.

Then, in a move that will never leave my mind, the soldiers ordered us to leave our home and put a "seal" on the door. This seal was a paper placed on the door between the doorjamb and the door itself. It was as if we were trespassers in our own home. They told us to leave and that if the seal was broken, we would not be able to exit Cuba.

So we packed one suitcase each, took some religious articles and left our home, never to return.

As we prepare to celebrate our nation's independence, please take a moment to thank our country, our servicemen and women and our nations' founders for the blessings of liberty we enjoy, and fight hard for those yet to be realized.

Rudy Molinet is a real estate broker, co-owner of Marquis Properties Realty in Key West and a community and human rights activist. He resides in Old Town Key West with Harry Hoehn, his spouse of 17 years. Contact him at rudy@rudymolinet.com.