to princeton university's director of admissions: in considering me for a scholarship you have asked for, and have every reason to expect, an essay from me about myself. and, as a clever high school graduate, i of course realize the subtext of this essay about who i am and why i want to enter princeton, is actually to make clear to you why you should have me. i have gotten tips, from friends who have preceded me to college, that being a latina, with my grades, list of activities and relative poverty, i am as good as in if i simply do the dance and work in a word like "bipolarization" every so often. and while i love dances -- this dance of self is one i am afraid to master. i prefer to write about my mother.
for my mother, that afternoon eleven years ago was a watershed not because of my father's
there was never any pretense that the gorgeous, vital, clever, temperamental animal that was my mother ever for a heartbeat considered having any life of her own. she ignored all her needs and was alive only for me. it was terrific. at the time.
"one tear. only one. so make it a good one." this was my mother's instruction to me.
my mother dealt with our considerable problems of survival by talking. always she discovered her own best thoughts by sifting through her own words. the mother stops talking in mid-sentence, realizing she has just solved something and makes a note.
each night my mother promised me a wonderful life.  each night i looked for a new expressive way to tell my mother how much i loved her. the child is ardent. clutching at her heart. kissing her mother.  holding her mother's face, talking directly into her eyes. the mother, enormously pleased, is nonetheless thrown by the extremes of it.
i just played and did my lessons and every time i looked up my mother was in the process of saving us.
desperation in her hands was our weapon.
with this weapon she had her marriage annulled - usually impossible for the poor - and somehow convinced an associate of my father's to transport two mexicans north in style.
my mother's prayer for us, which she made me repeat exactly, represented a stunning look into our future. "please god, let only the bad things change."
my mother had redefined her own passions. blaming herself for the father she gave me, she would never again be lured by a man's rough edges. she had decided that goodness would be her catnip.
at the time, i was oblivious to my mother's anguish. she loved and lived to talk. now, as if by a witch's spell, words were no longer her bridge but her barrier. in a very real sense she feared she had left herself behind.
we moved into a place managed by my mother's aunt. my mother worked two jobs in two local stores paying a total of 450 dollars a week.
just ever so barely enough.
but we were fine. we had it down. if only i could have stayed six. the camera moves quickly from the child to:
that quickly it was clear she could no longer work two jobs and leave me to my own at night. the following morning she did something about it. a boy i never saw again had changed our lives.
i will major in linguistics and make sociology my sub- concentration. because it has been my experience that the barriers of
my mother did not understand her male boss. his heart was good and he was rare in not flirting with her. but they were starkly different. privacy and dignity were the same word to my mother. naturally, when she found herself sitting next to a man who cried over his child's hurt she had no idea how to process the event. meanwhile, he has stopped for traffic near the end of the canyon. flor takes the opportunity to bolt.
the job was taxing her. she had no template for confusion let alone frustration. while waiting for the bus, flor suddenly turns and runs a few yards. and then back. and waves off the looks from her colleagues - many of whom are overweight. many of them adorable. all puzzled for the moment as they watch flor unsuccessfully try to shake off her day.
it was so unusual for my mother to ask my help that i realized immediately she was losing her battle to be uninvolved with the claskys. flor asks her daughter how to say something in english.
our culture embraces fullness in a woman. you, the women of the admissions committee, as intelligent as you are, have no idea how casual and complete such acceptance is back home, in the land of the size 16 bikini.
this is one of the cultural differences between us which i wish to explore academically at princeton. american women, i believe, actually feel the same as hispanic women about weight.
a desire for the comfort of fullness.
and, when that desire is suppressed for style and deprivation allowed to rule.
dieting, exercising american women become afraid of everything associated with being curvaceous, such as wantonness, lustfulness, sex, food, motherhood. all that is good in life.
the first time one sees natural beauty which is owned by others confounds the senses.  i had never imagined the word "money" could be associated with anything but the anxiety of not having enough. i didn't know god had a toy store for the rich.
learning english would cost five hundred and ninety nine dollars down and 15 monthly payments of one hundred and ten dollars. which represents 48 percent interest. mexicans marketing mexicans. but not a penny was wasted.
my mother showed an extraordinary facility for learning the language.
as well as a totally committed, obsessive work ethic, which blocked out all else. she was her daughter's mother. as flor silently mouths some english while listening to a tape,chum nudges her with a ball and, without thinking, she takes it from his mouth and tosses it. realizing, with alarm, a beat too late that she has broken the rule.
the experience was literally mind boggling. my mind did boggle. my cranial cells stunned. even if i had enough sense of wonder to imagine such a school existed; my sense of fairness made it unthinkable that any school could offer this much more than my own.
there is a terrible crisis which comes when your own personality is not equal to the challenge you face. when being who you are no longer works. deborah has started to jog. as she approaches flor, she calls for a clear path well in advance.
when people exist under one roof, a tiny society forms. the stuff of
my great aunt monica had finally managed to get her mother to los angeles and my mother was making a party.
i was with my friends who had helped me understand real optimism. as they pull in the driveway. cristina and her friends exit the car and squeal loudly at each other with the excitement of having it all. bernice exits last. she is not squealing.
though it is possible to judge harshly my conduct toward my mother in my first year at school; almost all professional literature excuses my behavior as developmental, since i was entering an age where rebellion and narcissism were to be expected. and i was being mentored. monica and her newly arrived mother are there along with the bride from an earlier scene and some of the girls who saw cristina off to malibu. women cooking in the kitchen. she tells the girls, in spanish, that cristina may not make it. they are disappointed. flor thinks - then says something to monica who nods in agreement. flor exits.
my mother never told me the details of her visit to the restaurant. but she often referred to it as the greatest conversation of her life.
the first minute we were alone, my mother told me that i would no longer go to the private school.
my mother changed our lives once more. this time because she saw in me, to her great alarm, a character flaw of some size. she has taught me to be a watch dog of my character, to control my ambition. i am not quite there.
for that reason should you choose to grant me your scholarship my mother, at my request, will be relocating to the new york metropolitan area so that she can stay close during my time at princeton. cristina moves closer to flor, who senses it immediately and wraps her in her arms.  kisses her head.
I hope my essay has done her justice. I love her with all my heart.