Eyebrows

They looked at me like I had a fatal disease, and I ought to know. I've seen that look before when I sat on a table in the examining room and got the news no one wants to get. Fortunately, and thanks be to God, I lived to tell about it. But, many years later, against all odds, after chemo and radiation, losing my hair and other parts of my body, I saw "the look" again.

This time, though, I sat in a chair under the bright diagnostic lights of the cosmetics counter, the make up artist and technician consumed with concern about what they were seeing. The concern was about my eyebrows. I'd gone by department store just to pick up some make up, but, what the heck, "the make up artist was free for an hour, did I have time for a refresher course in new products and application?" Sure. Why not. I'd just left Clearview Cancer Institute where I'd had my 18th six month check up, and I'd just had my infusion of a drug to take the calcium out of my blood and put it back in my bones where it belongs ... or that's what I think I know about it anyway. Kind of makes me feel like I have the flu for a couple of days, and my eyes were bloodshot. But time in the make-up chair seemed appealing.

And, it was. It was relaxing to get pampered and shown ways to perk up my skin tone and make my cheeks pop with color. But, the eyebrows. Oh, dear. I sensed something was wrong when the artist picked up a brush and came toward me. "Well, you see," she said "... as we age we sometimes lose some of our hair. Oh yes, that's it, but you could try this or that," and with that she drew the perfect brow. "And always, but always, pluck any brow hairs that fall outside this particular brow line."

I flatly, but politely?, tell her I lost all my hair and most of my eyebrows and lashes to chemo a few years ago, and that I'm quite fond of the eyebrows I have now, even the errant hairs that buck the system and grow outside the brow line. Pluck those plucky daring darlings? I don't think so.