Keep it Together

My mom has taught me a lot of things. She taught me how to swing and how to color inside the lines. She taught me how to make pizza dough and chicken pasta salad. She taught me to be good at memorizing: whether it's the thirteen original colonies or every word of "Aaron's Party (Come and Get It)," if you need something memorized I'm your girl.

But I think the most important thing she taught me was how to keep it together. How important it is to get up in the morning and do your hair, even if the world is crashing down around you. About, to quote Miranda Lambert, "hiding your crazy." About how you need to walk into a room and be sparkly (being sparkly is a Connor family phrase that means being charming in social situations, even if your life is in shambles, you just got done yelling at your kids, you are in a fight with your husband, the neighbor kid just carved her name into the side of your car with a rock, etc. I didn't realize this wasn't a normal phrase until I told a friend to go be sparkly in his interview. Whoops.)

I know as much as the next person that keeping it together isn't the easiest thing in the world. I remember once, during the summer of the big heartbreak, when I was laying on my bed crying. I missed D so much I could barely breathe and I kept waiting for that feeling of comfort that everyone talks about. Where they feel that someone come and put their arms around them, or a friend turns up out of nowhere with a plate of cookies.

It wasn't happening. I waited and waited. I was, to use another Connor family phrase, in a puddle. I'd used all my tears so I was just laying there. Then suddenly, I had a feeling. It wasn't a warm, fuzzy feeling. It was a voice in my head telling me to get off my ass (sorry for the language, the voice was a little sick of me by that point) and do something. It was a voice telling me to take a shower, put on lotion, paint my nails and go outside. It was telling me to keep it together.

I had to relearn this lesson recently. Sure, it's a lot more fun to gather your roommates around you for a good cry and ice cream binge. It's a lot easier to lay in your bed and, when you are forced to get up, put on a nasty tshirt and forget your makeup. But that's not what Linda taught me. She taught me to lose the drama and walk outside with my head held high. To go to the party and be sparkly, even if it's easier to sit in the corner.

And that's what I'm gonna do.