The days of thin eyebrows are gone. Back in the day, no one mentioned that eventually the tweezed ones would not grow back. Being young, I doubt I would have listened, regardless. Having slavishly plucked to appease fashion demands of the latter part of last century, mine are decidedly thin, from lack of regrowth. But on the negative side, they have creatively developed some extremely long and wire-y disciples that vie for attention.

I now ‘trim’ the brows—my tweezing efforts have had to move to the lower portion of the face. Can’t science develop a directional flow beam-a-ma-bob that will show the hairs where they are needed? Herein lies your millions, all you millennials. Of course it may not be needed, those of us who over-tweezed may be long gone, having gradually faded to nothing, one hair at a time.

And while the upper eye area has an overgrowth of select hairs, the lower lid has the reverse. Gradually the lower lashes are disappearing. A small dab of liner pencil where I never used to need it, helps it look less sparse. Meanwhile, the upper lashes which were always rather short and light on the tips have been given a surprising boost in recent years. The diagnosis of glaucoma, which requires eye drops, is the reason. On my first visit the young female doctor (I may have shoes as old as she was) tried to reassure me as the tears gathered in my eyes, “Don’t worry, it may never get any worse than now, and just wait until you see what long dark lashes you will develop as a side-effect from the drops.” Yes, exactly, at 60+ what I really, really want is long dark lashes. It was little comfort at the time, but eventually I grew to embrace this little gift, as I saw the results. More importantly, after two years the glaucoma has not worsened.

The young doctor forgot to mention a quirky little fact, if she even knew— that every now and then, all the longest lashes will fall out…within close timing of each other… gone. There are odd gaps through the lash line, that probably no one but me notices. It is slightly alarming at the time as I ponder–what happens if they never come back at all? I’m unable to answer myself when I pose these deep questions.

These were the thoughts going through my mind this morning as I groomed and cosmetically enhanced my face. Smoke and mirrors, friends, smoke and mirrors…There are other things that have disappeared, like my waistline, hair colour and the once smooth texture of my fingernails. Gone, gone, gone. Perhaps you think I place too much emphasis on my appearance, but I kind of liked the face I was finally getting used to. I know, I know, it is part of the deterioration of ageing and has nothing to do with one’s inner beauty. Really, I’m okay with that…I’m just not ready to have the eyebrows of comrade Brezhnev.

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