The Eyebrows
With René Anderson-Vorfeld
Mom was always a bit of a beauty queen. I can count on one hand the number of times she left the house without full makeup. I even remember her gym phase when I was a kid; she would literally shower and do her makeup before she went to the gym. You read that right, before. I never went to the gym with her so I only assume she wore actual work-out attire while she was there. But it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if she just jumped on the treadmill in her pantyhose and pumps. She came from that era when women didn’t sweat, they “glistened,” and it worked for her. She always looked (and smelled, somehow) like a million bucks.
The few times I remember her going out without full makeup, she would, at the bare minimum, put on her eyebrows. Mom’s hair is very fine and thin, and blonde to boot. Her eyebrows, therefore, are sparse at best, and she grew up in that late 50s/early 60s era when eyebrows were very precisely drawn in. I never understood it, but her eyebrows took damn near as long as the rest of her makeup. At least, it seemed that way when I was standing in the doorway waiting for a ride to the pool.
Yet she taught me well; as a kid I was fascinated by the face painting ritual and paid very close attention. There was, therefore, more than one occasion when mom and I would be going on an outing, and we’d be far too deep into driving to said outing for her to back out before she looked at me and squealed, “are you wearing makeup?” Mind you, I was about 7 or 8 at the time so eyeshadow with liner and mascara was probably a bit much. But I was so good at it, learning from the master, that she didn’t notice until we had left the house. And her first lesson was, “makeup should enhance, not exaggerate.” I understood that at 7, but the first year I was actually allowed to wear makeup, I greatly exaggerated — until I realized how much longer I could sleep if I chopped the makeup routine. But I always did my eyebrows — still do. (Luckily mine are less sparse so it’s a quick fix).
Neither of us remember mom ever being overly made-up; even in photos from her younger years she is just properly quaffed but never garish. In fact, she was sometimes, shall we say, a little overly critical of women who lacked her subtle hand. The eyebrow obsession, for example, went so far that she would often critique other women, particularly famous women, on their excellent, mediocre, or tragic grasp of eyebrow shaping. In fact, she made us watch Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, and promise we would never let her get so out of hand. Unfortunately, the Alzheimer’s brain doesn’t always see what’s actually there, something I’m sure she didn’t realize when she made us promise to smack her upside the head if she ever turned into Bette Davis. For a time after she got sick, the beauty queen tendencies did go way overboard, and she wound up looking not unlike Joan or Bette — Or Carol Burnett as Nora Desmond (come to think of it, she acted a lot like Nora Desmond…). Our father, being honest to a fault and not fully grasping her disconnect from reality once said, “Jesus, what have you done to your face?” And then couldn’t understand why she was upset with him (in all fairness, René pointed out that mom-in-her-right-mind would’ve had the exact same response). Tact was never dad’s strong suit, but really, the brows were pretty cray-cray. First of all, she lost her ability to differentiate between a blonde eyebrow pencil and a black charcoal crayon. Or sometimes red lipstick. Then she took it a step further and began filling in the sparse spots on her hairline with said black charcoal — or red lipstick. So Rene and I went out and bought makeup wipes and taught dad to say, “oops, looks like you’ve smudged your makeup!” and then wipe it off without further comment. Eventually we managed to pilfer all makeup that was not of a neutral shade, just praying she didn’t find her way to a Sharpie.
Some will find this a sad turn, and I suppose it is. It sucks to watch a woman that was so vivacious turn into porridge, but as we’ve said before, you have to find the funny. René and I were naturally a little saddened by her inability to even recognize what was happening on her own face, but then we thought of what she would say about herself were she in her right mind. And we were brought to tears; not of sadness, but of riotous laughter. We thought of all of the lovely and sweet things she’d have to say (that would be sarcasm for those of you who aren’t fully familiar with how this family works…) and ended up rolling on the floor like crazy people. It’s actually fun to imagine what her reactions would be — it helps us feel like there’s still at least a small connection to the woman she was.
