I Had It All Together Until One Day I Unraveled

Unraveling means we have string to wrap it up for another day

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I used to have an even-keeled temperament; even my High School class voted me as least likely to have a standing prescription for Valium by the time I turned sixty. The Woman’s Club took bets I would lose my cookies during motherhood. From conception through communion, colic nights, summer camp, and cupcake fails, I held it together, until that fateful day when I didn’t.

There was the time my oldest daughter got her leg stuck in the plastic bars in the backyard playhouse, on her eighth birthday, as her entire third-grade class was arriving for her party. Poor thing, every time she tried to wiggle her little leg free it just got stuck a little bit more. As her friends began to pour into the yard, all they could see from their vantage point, was what looked like my daughter was doing some sort of dance. Soon I had twenty- seven third graders sticking their legs through any openings of that playhouse…………………..and they all got stuck. What did even-keeled Kelly do? Calmly went into the kitchen, pulled out a gallon of vegetable oil, and drizzled it on their limbs like a parade of tin men trying out for the Wizard of Oz. They all managed to wiggle free, crying like I was coming at them with a chainsaw, and as a reward for their bravery, each…