you is beautiful

I was having a boo-rattly day

and I'm pretty sure I know why.

I found out yesterday that my grandma

- the one who doesn't care much for me -

visited NWA, and nobody bothered to let me know.

Of course, 

I wouldn't have wanted to go visit.

But Tyler would have insisted that it was the right thing to do.

And I would have agreed with him. grudgingly.

So there's that.

But, also

any mention of Grandma GeeGee

takes me back to awkward adolescence

when she painted my 12 year-old face with her old lady make-up

complete with too-pink rouge and non-sparkly blue eyeshadow

then paraded me in front of my dad

and she told him,

"She's homely. She needs to wear make-up."

He must've agreed

because I was allowed to wear makeup from that day forward.

It was another year before I'd realized 

that she meant homegirl was so ugly I shouldn't be out in public.

I thought 'homely' meant somebody who likes to be home.

Not somebody who needs to stay home.

~

I decided today

that 31 years was plenty long enough to be ugly.

(technically, only 30 years- since it took me a year to realize

that I'd been pronounced ugly. Which I suppose means

I was also stupid. But that just now dawned on me,

so I didn't suffer any ill affects from it.)

So,

inspired by a pillow I'd seen on Pinterest

which was inspired by the movie The Help,

I created a reminder.

In the movie, when Abileen tells Mae,

"You is kind. You is Smart. You is important."

I leaned over to Tyler and whispered, 

"She should have told her she was beautiful, too."

Because everybody should be told that.

Consider yourself told.