Dear Momma,
Some days are harder than others. Work is stressful and tests your patience. You give up before 10:00 am and just accept the day is going to suck and put your head down and make the best of it. Some days the phone rings off the hook, the length of your to-do list begins to rival the length of the constitution, and you just want to go home and drink margaritas until you’re numb. And when you leave work and get home there’s still laundry to be done, supper to be cooked, baths to be taken, garbage to be sacked up, dogs to be fed, and all the other myriad tasks that make up being a functional human being. But what about when you don’t want to be a functional human being, you just want to drink wine and eat microwave popcorn for supper?
Paciencia y Fe.
Paciencia y Fe is Spanish for patience and faith. It’s also the name of a song from the musical In the Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda. In that song, Abuela Claudia sings about her life from being a child in Cuba to moving with her mother to New York in 1943. She sings about the struggle of learning a new language, finding work, and dealing with life as an immigrant in a town that really doesn’t want her there. She’s struggled through life as a cleaning lady and here in her later life she’s won the lottery but she doesn’t know what to do with the money. She sings to her mother in the song, what should she do with the winning ticket? What do you do when your dreams come true? “What can I do but pray.” It’s a beautiful, powerful song and holy Moses the lady who sings it on the cast album has got pipes that most singers can only dream of (me over the corner going yep.)
Paciencia y Fe.
Patience and Faith.
I know I could use a little more patience and faith. Patience with what I think is stressful in my life and faith that it is going to get better. I had a bad day yesterday, I’ll admit it. It was bad. I just about had a meltdown, at work nonetheless, but I sort of kind of held it together.
Patience and Faith.
Today is another day. It may suck just as hard as the other one did, but there’s always tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. It will get better at some point.
Patience and Faith.
“What can I do but pray.”
Hang in there, Momma. I’ll pray for you and you can pray for me. We’ll get through this together. Have patience in yourself and faith as well. I love you, just know that.