It was about a year and a half ago, and both my daughters were home for Christmas. We were getting ready to go out for dinner and my youngest daughter, Parker, was doing something to her eyebrows.
Was she coloring them? Was that a marker? Why would she do this?
“This is an eyebrow pencil,” she said. “Some of us like to have eyebrows.”
“I have eyebrows,” I said.
Both my daughters shook their heads. I looked in the mirror, and pointed to the blonde fuzz that rested above my eyes. “What do you call these?”
“Sad,” my oldest daughter, Quincey, said.
I studied my barely visible eyebrows. I looked at my daughters’ perfect brown arches.
Good God, they were right! Why hadn’t I noticed this atrocity? Why hadn’t anybody ever said anything? Or, were they saying stuff behind my back? I bet my nickname was No Eyebrows.
“Okay,” I whispered to Parker. “Can you give me eyebrows?”
“You don’t need to whisper,” she said, taking the cap off her eyebrow pen. “We’re not doing anything illegal.”
Well, maybe not illegal, but bordering on scandalous. This was all very exciting.
She pushed my bangs back and positioned the pen on the top of my pseudo-eyebrow. Slowly, she traced one brow, then the other. She took a step back, nodded, and smiled.
“So much better,” Parker said.
“Congratulations, Mom,” Quincey added. “You now have eyebrows.”
I walked over to the mirror.
“AAAAH!”
I looked like Uncle Leo from Seinfeld, when Elaine drew his eyebrows with magic marker.
Uncle Leo was not the look I was going for.
“They’re so dark,” I said, staring at this bold addition on my face.
“Trust me,” Parker said. “You just need to get used to them.”
And she was right.
For the next few hours, I kept checking out my new eyebrows and by the end of the night, my initial horror had been replaced with adoration.
It was like my eyes had been waiting their whole lives for that special something to complete them, a special something called eyebrows.