“Middle age arrives ... with a sudden unbidden insight in the middle of a sleepless night. You roll over and eye the clock and see all at once that the phrase ‘anything is possible’ is not true. That is, it is no longer true for you, if it ever was …. In a way, this comes as a relief.”

Author's note: homemade Christmas gift suggestion follows.

My oldest son, now 6, was born in Mexico City because I was working there at the time (alas, because of his foreign birth, he’ll never make me First Mother to the President ... but he could make me First Mother-in-Law!). When he was still a wide-eyed ball of baby flesh nestled in a sling, my husband and I would take him for a walk along the esplanade near our apartment is the historic La Condesa neighborhood.