Nobody who has bags under their eyes doesn’t care about things. This was the philosophy that Linda carried with her through her life.

Last night she had attended a Mary Kay party that a friend of her’s hosted and every minute of that party reminded her of her philosophy. Each and every time the Mary Kay rep went on about the wonderfulness of not having bags under her eyes, due to the magic properties of some overly expensive cream or another, Linda felt frustrated. It seemed like the whole night was designed as an event for a group of women to congregate and talk about how terrible they think they look and how to “fix” this “problem”.

Linda, on the other hand, was proud of the bags under her eyes. She was 56 years old and those bags signified every sleepless night, every cry (be it for sad times or happy ones), every hurtle and every challenge she and her loved ones experienced over those 56 years. The nights spent parting with friends in college, finishing statistics analysis for work, loving someone special, training a puppy, raising a baby, raising another baby, worrying about losing the family business, the cancer scare, finding the money for the children’s college dreams, working to bring the business back, celebrating surviving, celebrating graduations and celebrating a wedding.

Linda was damn proud of those sleepless nights and had no desire to cover them up.