Friday, January 28, 2011

The unwanted hair wars


When I grew into teenage years, my body changed in wondrous and terrible ways. The tiny nubs on my chest bloomed into soft white breasts. Hair grew grew dark and wiry on my legs, dark and curly in secret places. Pimples splotched my face. I squeezed them regularly, even though my father cautioned me to leave them alone. My mother, preoccupied with her long hours of nursing shift work and the looming debt of the farm, told me absent-mindedly that washing my face thoroughly would get rid of the pimples. I scrubbed furiously. To my horror, the pimples broke and bled, leaving a field of tiny reddish-black scabs speckling my face.

But the worst thing about puberty was my mustache. My upper lip was blessed with thick down that began to darken as I crossed into teen years. I was mortified. Having a mustache put me squarely into the category of “ugly girl”. That, combined with a weak chin, caused me to wince each time I looked in the mirror. And look I did, staring often at that face of mine, at the pimples, the weak chin, the mustache. Each time I despaired. I felt so ugly. Each time I searched for something redeeming.

I settled on my eyebrows. They rose above my dark brown eyes, thick and lustrous. I plucked them meticulously, carving them into a full smooth line. Secretly, I imagined myself winning a beauty contest in our high school: “Mary Lou van Schaik, proud recipient of the Most Beautiful Eyebrows award.”

Walking down the grey terrazzo-tiled floors in our high school, past rows of dull brown lockers, I held my head high. My eyebrows sailed ahead of the rest of my face, perfectly groomed and arched. Mentally, I wore an invisible face veil, praying that students and teachers alike would look only at the upper half of my face.

I remember ordering a home electrologist kit from the Simpsons-Sears catalogue. It arrived in a plastic case, with an instruction booklet which I found difficult to follow. I was too embarrassed to ask my father for help. After a week, I returned it. Later, I took refuge in bleaching creams and eventually weekly trips to the Diana Salon on Queen Street in Toronto. There I joined other women in the waiting room, all of us sitting with our faces bent, our eyes downcast. One by one, we were ushered into a room divided into work stalls, each stall separated from the other by a white hospital curtain. The sessions consisted of 15 minutes of torture, as a technician in a white coat poked an electric needle into a pore on my upper lip, pressed a foot pedal, and a jolt of sharp stinging pain zapped the offending hair. The procedure often left tiny burn marks. I bore the pain stoically, fed by an image of a hair-free face. After countless years, the shadow on my upper lip faded. Surprisingly, the pain was worth it. I felt normal, even liberated.

The decades have passed. Now well into middle age, I contend with half a dozen chin hairs and a slight darkening on my upper lip. My mustache no longer bothers me. Instead, my beauty fixation has returned to my eyebrows. About three or four years ago, I noticed the brown hairs were being replaced at an alarming rate by white ones. For a long time, I plucked out each invading white hair. Lately it's become a losing battle – there are just too many of them. “Accept yourself,” I told myself, and vowed to leave my whitening brows alone.

But old habits die hard. I actually love plucking those sturdy white hairs. It reminds me of those earlier days squeezing pimples. Such a satisfying feeling to rid the body of this or that imperfection.

I fell into temptation. Even though I promised I would not pluck, I looked in the mirror and a crop of white hairs laughed and teased me. Come get us, they taunted. One evening last week, I reached into my cosmetic basket, which holds dusty relics from earlier years: a bottle of foundation that probably should be thrown out, some old red lipstick, a case of mauve and grey eyeshadow, two pairs of nail clippers, an eyebrow brush and my trusty tweezers. The nail clippers and tweezers straddle the basket's rim, within easy reach.

Unlike the brown hairs, the white ones grow in straight and bristly, like pine trees in a forest of maples. I looked carefully at two or three, took aim with my tweezers, and missed. Out came half a dozen regular brown eyebrow hairs. I tried again. Another miss, and six or seven more brown hairs lay curled on the tips of the tweezers. I began plucking fiercely, picking up speed, assuming that by going faster, my error rate would decrease. Wrong assumption. More brown hairs fell to the sink and still the crafty white ones stood out defiantly. I finally parted all the brown hairs, like sedges in a swamp, isolated one white one, positioned the tweezers firmly on it and yanked. Out it came – along with a cluster of fledgling brown ones.

There was now a rather large gaping hole in my eyebrow line. I looked like I was suffering from a minor skin disease. I dug into the cosmetic basket and drew out the eyebrow brush. No use – no matter if I brushed up, down or sideways, the hole remained.

So now my right eyebrow has a miniature clear-cut patch in its forest. Meanwhile the left eyebrow boasts a flock of strong white rebels. The hairs refuse to lay down neatly and the brows look lopsided. I may have won the mustache war, but have definitely lost on the eyebrow front. I'm leaving them alone.


Saturday, January 1, 2011

Our Christmas Creche


When we were growing up, our Christmas tree often went up on December 24rd, just before the day itself, and always came down on January 6th, the Feast of the Magi. My father would choose a five-foot spruce from the grove that marked the boundary of our farm. Once home, he stood the tree in a bucket of wet sand set in the middle of a low wooden platform made from old two-by-fours and plywood, and secured the tree by wires into a corner of our living room. The tangy smell of spruce needles spiced our excitement.

Dad hauled the large box of Christmas decorations up the basement stairs. He pulled out a square green and red checked cloth, snugged one edge close to the base of the tree and draped the rest over the platform. Tangled clusters of lights were unwound and tested. The bulbs were old and soft-nosed. Years of use had worn off bits of paint to reveal tiny filaments blazing through the scratched blue, red, green and yellow glass. The decorations were wrapped in yellowed tissue paper. We children were allowed to help, but only if we were very careful and very quiet. Shiny gold and silver balls threw back contorted images of our faces when we peered at them up close. Bright blue and red metal balls, light as breaths, twirled and sparkled on the tree branches. There were a couple of Nutcracker toy soldiers, smartly decked out in red and black uniforms, some blown glass snowflakes, a dozen twisted strips of shiny tin, and a silver foil garland that zigzagged around the tree. An eight-pointed gold star leaned precariously from the top, lit from behind by a tiny yellow bulb.

Dad went back to the basement, returning with a large flat cardboard box. He placed it carefully on the sofa and lifted the cover. The Christmas creche lay hidden, the plaster statues wrapped in newsprint. My father forbade us to touch them. The creche had been in my mother's family when she was a child. It had survived the ocean crossing when my parents emigrated from Holland in 1950. Dad was determined that the pieces would not fall prey to our clumsy and careless clutches, unlike the blue and white china that had so often slipped from our hands and had soon been replaced by turquoise melmac.

My father unwrapped each statue and wiped away last year's dust with a rag. As each piece was placed under the tree, the Christmas story came to life. Mary knelt beside the manger, her light brown hair partly covered with a cream shawl. Her blue robes were edged in orange, her hands joined in prayer. Joseph knelt across from her, his dull brown robes matching his beard. Close by, a chocolate brown cow and a long-eared black mule stretched their necks toward the manger. A short distance away, two shepherds bent forward, intent on finding out what lay underneath the shocking star. One carried a lamb balanced on his shoulder, the other held a crooked staff in one hand and flung back his dark green cloak with the other. Three curly-haired grey sheep grazed on their tiny grass bases. Far back, half hidden by the drooping branches, the three wise men marched slowly across the cloth desert. Two looked like Bedouin: swarthy faces set off by glittering eyes and pointed black beards, their heads wrapped in crimson turbans, gold rings dangling from their ears. They wore cloaks, short pleated trousers and pointed shoes. One carried an incense burner, the other an urn. The third Magi was dressed in sable robes, a jewelled crown circling his head. Kneeling, he held a box, presumably filled with gold. Trailing the procession was a servant leading our favourite piece, a proud camel bearing a polished saddle.

And in the crib, on a bed of dull ceramic straw, lay baby Jesus, more the size of a four-year old than a newborn infant. His sturdy legs and feet protruded from a short cream tunic with a brown sash. His arms were stretched out, palms up. His dark eyes gazed out of a calm and unsmiling face. Directly above, an angel swung from a low branch and looked down adoringly.

As Dad unwrapped the last of the pieces, my siblings and I fell silent, our wrangling corked for a few moments. One of us stretched out a hand to pet the cow. “Blijf af!” barked my father. “Keep off!”

When he turned his back, we slyly slid a finger along the cloth to touch a sheep. We were sorely tempted to stroke the camel's long brown neck – but that was risking a sharper yell and a clap on the ears. For the moment, it was enough to sit quietly, watching our tall stern father, weary from endless farm chores, adjust the placement of each piece so that it matched a timeless order, the only order in the world for him, the order of his faith.

My father has been dead for more than 20 years, but the creche survives, now part of the Christmas tradition for my brother David and his family. I lingered over it during our visit this year. Mary's lipstick has been refreshed in coral, to match the edge of her orange cloak. One of the Bedouin kings bears a scar around his neck, evidence of vital repair after accidental decapitation. The mule is minus half an ear while the camel stoically endures a hole in its plaster neck. But the Magi's eyes still glitter, and baby Jesus still directs his impassive gaze on the world.