THE NEVER-ENDING STORY

The Tale of a Browbeaten Man

I went in to take a shower this morning and made the mistake of looking at myself in the mirror. More than that, I had on my glasses.  Usually when I see myself it’s late at night and I don’t have them on. I’ve washed my face, and there’s just that brief moment before they’re back in place. I look in the mirror, things are a little blurry, but there I am, in all my septuagenarian glory. I don’t dwell. Then the glasses are back in place, and I kind of instinctively send my eyes out looking for something more reassuring, like my toothbrush holder.

Anyway, first thing this morning, what do I see in all their shocking abundance when I happen to gaze upon my face? Of course – my eyebrows! There they were, once again, loosed out upon an innocent world from above my glasses; this time looking like yet another covid variant, in all their harrowing, hair-borne fecundity.

And as I beheld them, filled with horror and regret at having seen them in the first place, several questions shot through my mind in quick succession:

First, did I have scissors on hand sufficient to the task? Yes, I thought, I did. Or garden shears in a pinch.

Second, how long had they been like this? And why had no one dared mention them earlier? Or at least yelped in terror when they saw me?

Third, would this never end?

I opened the cabinet and grabbed the scissors. I forced my eyes back to the mirror and arched the furry beasts for their long, long overdue taming, and went to work:

Hack, hack, hack!
snip, snack, whack!
Get back! Get back!

Trimmings of gorgeous hair arched outward and down into the sink like stalks of wheat or new mown hay. Yes, it’s true. Much to my chagrin, my eyebrows are still dark, abundant, luxurious even. They are every good thing you could say about hair when compared to the baldness of the rest of my head and its fringe of bedraggled white floss.

Finally, it was over. The beasts had been subdued. For a time. I could once again be seen in public without humiliating myself and those nearby.

As I had my shower, I remembered the piece below, written more than 20 years before, when I first realized that my eyebrows had taken over my face while I wasn’t looking, and the answer it gave to the third question I had asked upon seeing myself in the mirror a short while before.

Bill Jeffers
1/11/2022

ODE TO MY EYEBROWS

My eyebrows, snarling
at the world from above my eyes,
announce my aging.
They are the only things I see at times 
when I look in the mirror.
But I cannot see them well enough anymore
to make them behave.
They are on their own, out of control,
going off in the world to make their own ways.
Each hair is an individual statement.
I could weave a heavy rope from them if they were plucked.
They are pots of paint exploded on my forehead.
Bushes grown wild in the garden of my face.
They are a frightening intelligence.
My eyebrows flap in wonder when I look around.
They frighten babies and chase young women away.
Young men gaze in horrified fascination at them.
They are barking dogs, gargoyles
straining from the tower of my face.
They are Hindenburg disasters flaming to earth.
They are Titanic’s halfway home and going down.
They are ’57 Caddies parked illegally in my No Parking Zone.
They are flat tires, blown engines, oil
spewing from my cracked block.
Caterpillars, worms, wooly mammoths,
hairy socks, bottle washers, raccoon tails, mink stoles.
They are all the hair energy of my bald head gone amok.
Air raid sirens, alligator gars,
misbehavers, cut-ups, no-respecters.
They are the juvenile delinquents of hair.
They are sneezes, chartreuse and fuchsia fog horns, tornadoes.
Loud farting in the sanctuary of my face.
Belches during grace at the wedding banquet.
Two busloads of tourists, sweating and shouting and
snapping pictures like mad out the windows of the bus.

My eyebrows, rude and unruly, waving in the face of life
from the top of my face.
They are my heroes, my role models, my mentors.
They are the examples I am trying hard to be:
the parts of me that don’t care
what anybody thinks,
the parts of me that won’t be stopped
from being exactly what they are.
They are the wild parts, the parts untamed,
reaching for sunlight and moonlight and starlight. 
They are the dark and dangerous wings 
of my most extravagant dreaming.
They stand defiantly over my bright eyes.
They will not be denied.
They will never stop.

Bill Jeffers
1995