My lioness mom

My mother once told me when I was a kid that, if I wished to be happy in life, I needed to be as stylish in bed going to sleep as I was during the day. Of course, she also said this so I would take a bath every night. Sold to me like a Tooth Fairy story. I was a child of the Grunge era. I actually bought hair gum that cost a maniacal $30 to keep my hair matte and leave the impression that the shower and I were not one.

My mother never understood my predilection for looking like a bum. Looking like a bum was very big when I was growing up, even if I did wear Perry Ellis by Marc Jacobs. My parents knew that they would find me at Wasteland at Haight street and fervently hoped that I would slowly be enchanted by the charms of the more conventional Neiman Marcus at some point in life.

My dad was always dapper, draped in Zegna paired with Rag and Bone jeans. He was cool without trying. My mother on the other hand was more prudent when it came to the substance of her wardrobe. She liked Escada. It was an unfortunate choice for me, I thought, since, as her only daughter, I would inherit her clothes. Others had Pucci, I had Escada.

Left to my own tastes and devices, I would have looked like a common groupie, even perhaps a semi-pro. Mommy’s Escada today fits me perfectly. What in my young eyes seemed matronly is now thoroughly sophisticated.

My mother is nothing like me. She grew up with the most amazing people I have ever met. I love my cousins from the maternal side. I embraced my father’s for their artistic flair in life and I loved my mother’s for being real. My daddy would say, “We put the fun in dysfunction.” 

Growing up I had my grandfather, Fernando, to idolize. I imagine this was a bit of a challenge for my mother, who had to witness this uneven distribution of my affection for many years. She did everything for my brother Tito and me. I loved and venerated Fernando. My focus was on this force of nature, a man who would eventually count my mother as the only woman in the family that he sort of deferred to. She was such a badass. She was the only one who could answer back to my imperious grandfather. Truly spectacular.

My grandfather was frugal as frugal would allow. My mother always lived sensibly. I had very sagacious influences. Yet, here I am. The anomaly. My brother, who has been loyal and almost fanatic to the more Spartan streak in our little ensemble, shakes his head as I declare things like “I think I should move to India for clarity.” Then came the declaration that I should move to London for the weather. An estimable lie, of course.

My mother, despite her own reservations, allowed me to see the world. I got lost in Chiang Mai for four weeks with spiritual healers and monks, Scandinavia for painting lessons, off to a memorable summer in Santorini to have meatballs, London for “arts and culture” and living in Copenhagen and witnessing the darkest day of the century and surviving it while eating Steff Hotdogs. I went to New York in my 20s to have that 20s experience. I just finished my book in San Francisco after being there for four months.

Of course this came out of my own pocket money and there have been times when being fabulous was challenging. Along the way, I made lifelong friends, experiences once reserved for the most sensational of novels (I scared Kanye West at an exclusive after-hours party in Paris; he said I was too intense), tossed many air kisses and learned how they meant nothing.

Mom let me see the world. She encouraged me to take everything in. She never questioned my nomadic ways. Traveling has been my greatest education.

My mother had an exchange program in Germany. She was affianced with one of the biggest industrialists there. My mom broke up with him. Despite all his wooing of picking her up in private jets to have a lunch break in Paris while she was at Uni in Germany. She said nyet.

She told me she broke up with her ex because on holiday he caught her straightening her toothbrush in the tumbler. Bells rang in her head and off she went. Her instincts are always strong. A lion mother even before we came along.

This I inherited from my mother. The eau de parfum de weirdo. She never, ever settled. Every decision she made, she stuck to.

I was 10, and we were staying at the Hyatt in Hong Kong. We came in the room and it was filled with white flowers. My father has always been confident, and dismissed this as a simple hello.

He knew that when it came to my mom, he needn’t worry about anything.

She fell in love with my dad, and that was that. She made her own wedding gown and she remains to me one of the most beautiful brides I’ve ever seen.

When I was supposed to get married, my mom put a pretty penny on a vintage unused Madame Alix Gres gown as my wedding costume. The wedding, as we all know, did not come to fruition. It was a terrible time in my life.

She never questioned me about it. She was just silently there. She’d send food, handbags and shoes. All the little things that would make me smile. I’m a girl. Deal with it.

She so just wanted me to be. She never once made me feel inferior. She taught me how to put levity in otherwise heartbreaking situations. I was good enough. It was okay. She didn’t care what people said. At that time, I did. However, because of her I started believing in myself because she just believed in me so much.

She understood me. All my romantic foibles. All my mistakes. I made one bad decision after another and she held strong. Once I cried to her because some people who I thought were my friends had just shamelessly ostracized me. People I’ve known for years. All she had to say was: “And then?”

Her stable nature and clarity of mind blend with my impulsive, devil-may-care nature. I want to be that honest woman who put her ambitions aside to protect her family. Just like she did. She quit her career as a politician to take care of my father, who always craved her company.

I’ve made wrong decisions and all she would tell me was, “See things through.” She is woman who values her friends and has a ceaseless determination to believe that every decision comes from a place where the guitar strings strum to the beat of a tendered heart. I wasn’t a hopeless and impractical romantic in her eyes; I was a human being.

In my lowest times, she was the only one who got it.

When I was a kid, I would write my parents’ speeches. They were in politics. Really. I had so many naïve thoughts but what I conveyed in all those speeches was hope. My mom and dad always made me pray every night. My prayers were freestyle.

And to this day, even while I do ceiling duty due to insomnia, it’s this gift of prayer that my parents have left me that keeps me calm and collected. It tides me to sleep.

She is a big fan of hope and faith.

Thank you, Mom. Thank you for putting God in my life even if we don’t go to church. Thank you for encouraging me to understand things that break my heart. Thank you for letting me leave the house at 18. Thank you for never nagging me about where I am in the world at every moment and just being happy for me. 

Mom allowed me to be me.

Thank you, Mom. I love you. It’s not about the holidays or being supportive of all my life decisions.  You made me see the world while you tirelessly cared for Dad. You made me never want to miss a thing.

You’ve believed in me and I idolize you. I dream of the day that my children will equally idolize you, to copy your manners and exalt your values.

I didn’t have you when I was little. You were busy making lives better for people you hardly knew. And in this endeavor, I got to know you all the better.

Life won’t touch you. You reach for that contact. And that’s what she always does: reach for edifying experiences.

We all should be so lucky.