Eyebrow raised...and erased!
I live in the very hot south Florida area where I often say there are two seasons: summer and hurricane. Heat is the common ingredient in all that is truly south Florida...the cooking, the dancing, the basketball team...but I digress. Anyways, early in my first round of chemotherapy, when I had lost all of my hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes, I was coping with (among many things) learning to wear a wig and “drawing” my eyebrows on.... again, while living in “the East Sahara”...
Almost from the start, this was fraught with issues, especially when it came to the “drawing eyebrows” part.... they were either too sharp, too dark, or I looked constantly very inquisitive, perplexed or just annoyed. And while there were many times when I indeed felt that way, I didn’t want my eyebrows to be telling the story. Oh, and I should also point out that I’ve always had a habit of raising my eyebrow or sweeping them when thinking or when I’m frustrated.
But, after a bit, I started to forget about my eyebrows, especially since my wig had a bit of a side-bangs look.
Then, one particularly hot south Florida day, I was out and about and had just wrapped up a call that was a bit of ‘head-scratcher’ or in my case, an eyebrow raiser! And apparently, I unconsciously did just that and then proceeded to go into a couple of stores for items I needed, the grocers, dry cleaners.... you get the drift. After a while, I noticed that a few people were glancing at me twice, but I had bigger issues to deal with, so I just brushed it off and kept going. After I finished my errands, I got into my car and lowered the visor, because in “the East Sahara” the afternoon sun can be quite blinding...
AND....THEN......I.....SAW.......IT.....the reason for the looks.
I was MISSING an eyebrow. Or actually…part of it had moved!
That’s right.
For you see, when I raised my eyebrow, the crease it created in my forehead (because of the heat!) marked that spot partially with the eyebrow-tint and THEN apparently, when I swept my eyebrow area (because of the ‘head-scratcher’, frustrating call), I erased the rest of it, just leaving behind the upper creased spot, mid-forehead.
There are simply no words for what I saw in the mirror.
But then, almost like a friendly whisper, I heard my inner Consuellama. I started to picture how she would look with a partial eyebrow, walking around with her other llama friends, completely oblivious to this fact...and I started to laugh. Out loud, in my parked car, with the visor down, and my partially raised and erased eyebrow mid-forehead. The more I laughed, the better I felt. And in my mind, it was my bestie C, saying, just laugh and know this too shall pass...just laugh, just laugh, just laugh.
And so, I did, and I hope you are too as you read this story. Because sometimes that’s all you can do...just laugh!
About Consuellama
Consuellama was inspired by llamas being hardy and well suited to harsh environments — they are quite sure-footed, easily navigating rocky terrain. It made me think that it is absolutely synonymous to navigating the “terrain” on the cancer journey. But beyond that, it is also the fact that you can’t look at the face of a llama and not smile!
