Girl, About your Mustache?

Recently, I was standing in my bathroom, looking at my face in the mirror. Pulling myself over the sink, I peered into the mirror and noticed tiny black hairs (one’s teenage boys would be proud of) darkening my upper lip.
I called my sister, and before she could say hello, I blurted out, “What do you do about your mustache?”
To this question, she responded.
“Girl, stop it! You know I get laser treatments every three months.”
A chorus of laughter ensued.
We laughed so hard, and for so long – I found my way to the safety of the bathroom floor. She begged me to stop laughing before she peed her pants.

The “Mustache thing” carried us back to our small bathroom on Aldine Street — where my mother, sister, and I stood breaths apart to wax tiny hairs from our upper lips. Every other Saturday morning, Mommy lowered the Beeswax into a pot of hot water and waited for it to melt. Using a shorter, fatter version of a popsicle stick, she smoothed the warm wax onto our upper lips and pressed a piece of cloth onto the wax. We dreaded the moment she would tug on the end of the cloth and rip wax, and hopefully tiny hairs from our upper lips. My sister and I squirmed and muttered, “damn it” beneath our breaths, and Mommy pretended not to hear us and smiled off to the side.
We knew that for at least a week, there was no way to cover our shiny, swollen lips that seemed to be jumping off our faces. But for the moment, we admired our hairless upper lips in the mirror.

We laugh now because our shared history has several stories like this to tell, but it’s only in retrospect we can laugh about the “mustache thing,” in particular. As the days and decades unfold, may we all create relationships that keep us real, and memories that make us laugh one sweet day in the future. Sisters or sister-friends are unpaid therapists.

Cheers to Sisterhood

Kadine Christie