REMEMBER ELIAN? HE'S 7 TODAY, IN CUBA

It's hard to imagine that it's been more than a year since Elian Gonzalez was plucked out of the ocean by a couple of fishermen.

It started as the perfect Thanksgiving story for Americans: The boy from Cardenas, Cuba, was rescued off the coast of South Florida. His mother drowned in her quest for freedom -- her final act apparently lashing her son to the inner tube that saved his life after a boat carrying 14 people sank.

Elian's great-uncle and cousin took him into their humble home in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. The nation showered gifts on the wide-eyed, big-eared boy who turned 6 on Dec. 6, 1999. He became a symbol, for the Cuban exile community and other Americans, of all who would give their lives to escape Communist dictator Fidel Castro's wretched regime.

But there are no perfect stories. And this one turned ugly.

The great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, had been arrested for drunken driving and apparently had trouble holding a job. The cousin appeared to be having some sort of mental breakdown as she cried on television in between hospital visits for exhaustion.

Elian's mother, Elisabeth Brotons, had taken the boy without his father's consent. Her ex-husband, Juan Gonzalez, was left behind in Cuba. And Juan wanted his son back.

Then it got uglier as the federal government threatened to intervene to return Elian to his father, an option extremely unpopular with the exile community. We woke up on April 22 to news footage of Elian being seized in the wee hours of the morning and whisked away in an unmarked van.

There were riots and walkouts and trash burned in the street, but once Elian and his father, stepmother and half-brother were safely sealed away in the Washington, D.C., area, people started to forget. And when an airplane took the Gonzalez family back to Cuba on June 28, people really started to forget.

Elian will turn 7 today. By all accounts, he's doing well, cared for by his extended family.

Only a few people observed the Nov. 25 anniversary of his rescue. Maybe there will be a few rumblings on April 22 next year. But all in all, Elian was another blip in the history of Cuba-U.S. relations. He seemed larger than life for a time, but he was just a little boy.

After all, pawns are little things.