Like mother, like daughter

I think my mother is laughing in her grave.

See, here's what happened:

I was lighting the gas fireplace for my first time. I turned the gas up too high. I couldn't find the lighter, so I used a dinky little match, and had to reach WAY in to light it.

WHOOOOM!

And now I have no eyebrows, hardly any eyelashes (the few that remain are very short and stubby), and much shorter hair. (And, as you recall, I was already short.)

Did you ever smell burning hair?

I was FINE. No skin got burned. I didn't even feel heat. I'm not sure that anything really CAUGHT on fire—I think the ends of my hair just turned to cinders in the heat. Right after it happened, I ran my hands through my hair and ashes of burned hair just fell off. Gross. Embarrassing. Smelly. Depressing. Gross. Humiliating. Gross.

Not only did it turn the ends of my hair to cinders, but it burned the haircolor off sections of my hair. So I am gray.

And here is why my mother is laughing: the same thing happened to her, probably when she was my very age. I remember it vividly—her pink, hairless face. (I was a teenager then and, to my credit, did not laugh.) And the funny thing is this: when my hair is quite short, I look very much like my mother. And now that my gray is showing, I look exactly like her. She is rolling in the clouds laughing, I know it.

So, I'm just wondering—is it appropriate to pray for eyebrows to grow fast? My gut speaketh: no. The praying I ought to be doing, and am doing, is gratitude that I hadn't put any gel in my hair yesterday (Darlene Michael Jackson). And, of course, that I wasn't injured, the kids weren't injured, the house wasn't injured. What's a little lost dignity (and hair)? It's not like I was going anywhere anyway these days, being sick.

It was just the final blow to my pride, is all.