Groucho Mark At mid-life, it is generally accepted that for a woman to age gracefully, she must become accustomed to losing certain things. I realize I am not twenty any more. Loss is something for the most part I can deal with…

I have acknowledged the permanent loss of my waistline. This is karma paying me  back for making fun of my mother’s elastic waist polyester slacks she wore during most of her adult life. Now, it is I who look for pants with a bit of stretch and if they must have zippers, they must hit me above the muffin top in order to contain it. Perhaps I delude myself but these are not, I repeat NOT mom jeans.

I have lost my breasts. Well, they are still there for the most part and I am grateful for that but they have morphed into undistinguishable flesh which melts into stomach, back and underarms. Unfortunately, my bra only accommodates the breasts so this presents me with a problem of what to shove into the bra and what not to…

I have lost the ability to wear cute little high-heeled shoes. I am afraid I will break a leg and despite the drama of my life I am not an actress.

I have lost the ability to run. I entered a 10K a few weeks ago and my poor ankles are still aching. In the future, if you see me running, you’d better run too because you can be certain something is chasing me and it’s probably really big!

I have lost my vision, as testified by my 2.5 readers. Even my sister, 11 years my senior (sorry sis for pointing that out sis) can see better than I can.

Most likely, I have lost my mind but a have yet to realize it.

One of the most humiliating  things I have lost is my eyebrows. For years now, my eyebrows have been silently walking off the job even as they seemingly reattach themselves to other parts of my face like invited guests. There is the layer of peach fuzz that surfaces on my chin and sideburns like my Sheltie’s winter undercoat. There are strange, singularly long hairs that sprout from my jaw like Cousin Fester. There’s a long thin blonde one that morphs out of my forehead until one day I discover it lying sweetly in a 2” curl. I’m sure they will be moving to my ears and nose soon.

It looks like out of sheer loneliness all these little strange sproutings  could initiate a little social gathering and begin to congregate in the vicinity of my former brows!

For years, I have used a secret regimen of dark powder and a coat of clear liquid gel. Until recently, I thought I was doing a great job concealing “my condition.”  A few weeks ago, my husband burst my bubble. He happened to meet up with a friend whom we haven’t seen in years. Afterwards, I inquired innocently, “’How’d she look?”

“Oh, my,” he confessed. ”She looks JUST like her mother.”

This elicited a naturally sympathetic reaction from me…

“But the worst of it is… She has lost her eyebrows!”

“Oh NO!”, I exclaimed, my mind racing from my friend’s predicament to secretly count the number of individual hairs left hovering above my own eyes. I secretly smiled and thought somewhat smugly to myself that at least he hadn’t noticed MY problem…”

Then, he says, “Yes, honey…Hers are even thinner than yours!”

AAAARRRRRRGHHHHHHHH!

While commiserating with my friend Kim, she told me about her mother, Miss Edith, whose beauty regimen is eternally trapped in the 1950’s. Miss Edith uses a shiny brown Maybelline pencil to draw an exaggerated arch on her completely missing brows. One day, in the midst of “putting on her face”, the doorbell rang unexpectedly. Forgetting that she had one eyebrow on and one eyebrow off, she opened the door to greet her guest. Imagine the postman’s reaction when a one eye-browed ghoul welcomed him with a demure smile.

My girlfriends (most of whom are younger and have the brows of Brooke Shields) have given me lots of suggestions. There are products, not unlike Rogaine, that you can brush on; but I find myself doubting that if it hasn’t worked for Matt Lauer’s whole head, it’s probably NOT going to work for me. I’ve dismissed having them “permanently” tattooed. The thought of “getting inked” is more than this Southern Bell can stand. If I am going to get tattooed, I want something fun. Something that’s going to make me smile. A happy face on my buttock, perhaps? But then again, it could end up below my knees in a few years…

Perhaps the best advice is the lesson I’ve learned from Miss Edith. Simply slow down and avoid opening the door until I have them both (safely and securely) drawn on and in place!