It's refreshing to have some time off from wondering whether I look fat.

Just as dressing well in your forties entails making choices that reflect who you are and not just wearing generic basics, looking good as you get older requires accentuating and enjoying what's specific to you rather than striving for cookie-cutter perfection.

Being an immigrant mother can be hard, but being a poor immigrant mother is much harder. You don't generally get to sit in cafes polishing your French by reading 'Le Monde.'

One of the many problems with parenting is that kids keep changing. Just when you're used to one stage, they zoom into another.

When I was 41, I had a very bad back pain, and it turned out to be Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

When I tell French parents that I know lots of American kids who will eat only pasta or only white rice, they can't believe it. I mean, they can understand how the kid left to his own devices might do that, but they can't imagine that parents would allow that to happen.

Where Americans might coo over a child's most inane remark to boost his confidence, middle-class French parents teach their kids to be concise and amusing, to keep everyone listening.

My family was once invited to lunch at a chateau owned by a friend of a friend. As we drove our rental car up to the giant castle, my kids gasped and said, 'They must be rich!'

Teach your kids emotional intelligence. Help them become more evolved than you are. Explain that, for instance, not everyone will like them.