After much whining over the Paris weather, I wrote my mom an impossibly long email crying over life stress and general crappiness.

I included some comments about pangs of guilt I have ben having over incidents in my car----um, ticket incidents.

The funniest thing is, she forgot about them.

But, she wrote me what is perhaps a lesson for your life too:



Dear daughter around the world,
I'm really sorry that you are feeling these stresses and that you are
not in
the place you want to be. I mean the mental place you wnt to be.

I know--the state of the world is insane and problems like countertops
and
shit like that are so inconsequential as to be absurd, but what can I
say?
This is how the karmic wheel turns so love and live and observe and
teach
and continue. El tren de la vida avanza--that is what my Calderon
grandfather always said...so we live, we die, we love, we go insane, we
procreate and we create, we plant seeds and we sow.
You will succeed.
If you can, step back--if not to say, well all will be ok, then just to
breathe.
What tickets? I don't know what tickets you're talking about?

Mariana, you may feel white-ified, but well if you do, you do and if
you
are, you are. It is a strang world we live in and I think we are all
strangers in a strange land. Now that I have a gringo progeny (so to
speak)
I am mellowing in my old age (I will be half a century day after
tomorrow)
and it's all good. Write what's real. Do you want to be a lawyer?
Make
money?Change the world? Do what you have to to get where you want to
be.
I don't think poodle beauty shops are up your alley, but what do I
know?
Look at your sister..what strange paths she has taken to end up on the
same
road...an MD and an indeterminate professional career....in hair coloring?.......as a mom.--well, Do
you
remember what venom she threw my way when she hated me?
Of course, I believe you can never eat too much bread, if it is good
bread
and not Pan Bimbo.
I had high cholesterol last month and have been on the forced oatmeal
for
breakfast diet since October.
Manuel and I watch network tv, what could be worse?
Mi amor, you will never be the hija mala because all my children are
;the
best, the most beautiful, the smartest in the world. Love, y un
abrazo
fuerte de la mama mala.