My friend called this morning, asking my opinion about a Groupon microblading deal she’d snagged. While she readily acknowledged beauty is pain, she feared this procedure might entail more than she’d bargained for.

“Microblading, painful? Pfft! Don’t make me laugh,” was my dismissive response. Microblading was child’s play compared to the macroblading I’d experienced at the hand of my older sister 40-odd years ago. Lucky for my friend she’d missed out on that deal.

One boring afternoon in the ‘70s, my sister Rosalie convinced me to “do something” about the two caterpillars masquerading as eyebrows on my forehead. Furthermore, as our family’s anointed beauty guru—she’d been to New York City twice—she declared herself the one to do it.

I mumbled “okay,” unwittingly giving her permission to commit what can only be classified as a hate crime against my face. Dismissing the humble tweezers as inadequate for the mammoth task at hand, she grabbed her Lady Schick and began hacking my unruly eyebrows into submission.

The result wasn’t exactly the graceful arch I had envisioned. The words “burn victim” don’t begin to describe it. I ran, bawling, from mirror to mirror throughout our house, praying the horrifying image reflected in the bathroom was the result of bad lighting. It wasn’t. Good lighting only magnified the brutality of the crime. The only thing missing was a band of yellow police tape across my forehead.

Not only did my sister refuse to apologize, she shamelessly tried to convince me she’d upped my beauty game, insisting I was simply too unsophisticated to appreciate the avant-garde look she’d crafted for me. I wasn’t buying it. When my mother called home a few minutes later, I wailed into the receiver, “I am browless! Rosalie made me do it! I’ll have to go to church browless tomorrow!”

My mother was furious. No 15-year-old daughter of hers was going “braless” anywhere, much less to church. “Put your sister on the phone this instant!” she barked. “And you put your bra back on, missy.”

If only re-growing my brows could have been accomplished as quickly as clearing up my mother’s misunderstanding. It took weeks for them to fill in, during which time I suffered no end of quizzical looks and poorly suppressed giggles as, head down, I navigated my browless teenage life.

Rosalie has been gone four years now, and I miss her immeasurably. I don’t know if I lessened my friend’s apprehension about microblading, but I know I would give both eyebrows and every hair on my head to have just one more day with my sister. I would hand her the razor myself and let her have at it. And I’d count every hair that fell a blessing.