Raising an Eyebrow

I’m a bad mommy who isn’t paying enough attention to my children. And I have proof.

As many of you know my job has been CRAZY – blah, blah, blah. I’ve been super busy – blah, blah, blah.

But none of that gives me an excuse to become a totally un-observant parent. And –alas – I think that is what I have become.

This weekend, Zo Peep and Libby Doodle Doo and I were driving in the car. I was using the rear view mirror to look at Zo Peep as we talked about something (I can’t remember what). Suddenly, I saw something in the rear view mirror that startled me.

“What’s wrong with your eyebrow?”

“What, mommy?”

“Your eyebrow. Your left eyebrow. It’s missing. Well, half of it is missing. Where is the other half of your left eyebrow?”

Zo Peep looked incredulous and sheepish all at the same time.

When we got to our destination, I looked again. I was right. Half of Little Zo Peep’s left eyebrow had vanished.

“What did you do with your eyebrow?”

She hemmed and hawed and refused to make eye contact. Finally, she offered, “I’ve been pulling out the hairs a little at a time.”

“Really???” I thought.

Part of me felt horribly guilty that my elder daughter was slowly torturing herself as her mother busied herself with corporate matters. But the other –more practical – side of me didn’t buy her explanation. Zo Peep crumples into a pile of tears when I use a wide, wide tooth comb on her hair. Zo Peep has NO tolerance for pain of any kind. I could not imagine her slowly and systematically pulling out eyebrow hairs one at a time.

For the last day I’ve been asking her about the eyebrow. Last night my interrogation continued.

“When have you been pulling out your eyebrow hairs? I’ve never noticed you do it?”

“I’ve been doing it in the shower.”

A-HA!!!! BING* BING*BING. In the shower??? Now the jig was up.

“Did you climb up on the bench in the shower, get my razor (that – I thought -- was stored up high out of reach of curious little hands), and shave off your eyebrow?”

She looked at me as if I was psychic. And then she started to cry.

“Honey, I’m not going to punish you – but I DO need to know the truth. Did you use my razor to shave off half of your eyebrow?”

She didn’t answer for a full 2 minutes. And then she composed herself and said,

“I used soap first.”

I asked her when she did it. She said that she doesn’t know how to tell that kind of time yet, but thought it was a few days ago.

I then had a long talk with her about how dangerous razors were and how she had to promise never to use one again until she was a teenager and I showed her the proper way to use one. And I told her to NEVER use a razor on any part of her face EVER -- especially near her eyes.

When she went to bed I looked through some recent photo taken in March. At her school play on March 1st she had two complete eyebrows.

But in this blow-up from a photo taken on Easter (March 23rd), the left brow abruptly ends in the middle of her eye.

So Zo Peep has been walking around for over 2 weeks with only 1 and ½ eyebrows. And I never noticed.

Sad, very sad.