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During our community group last Thursday, Isabel was quietly playing with Esther’s cell phone. Being the imaginative girly-girl that she is, the cell phone wasn’t being used as a phone, but as a makeup compact. Isabel ran it softly over her face like an applicator, complete with the raised eyebrows and pursed lips that accompany every woman’s countenance while applying makeup. Enjoying the story she was creating in her head, I pulled my blush brush out of my purse, and handed it to her. She whispered a quiet “thank you” so as not to interrupt the other adults singing worship songs. First flicking the brush bristles over the cell phone, then touching them gently to her cheeks and forehead, she makeup-ed away.
Shortly Isabel seated herself between Esther (my sister / her mom) and Eddie, a bachelor friend of the family who just completed his doctoral residency. She started brushing his face too, which Esther quickly stopped,
“We don’t put makeup on boys.”
“Oh,” said Isabel bluntly.
Esther made some joke about Eddie not having one of those (blush brushes) in his house, and how scary would it be if we DID find one in his house. Isabel, thoughtfully glancing up at Eddie, said, “Eddie, if you had a wife, you would hab one of dese in yow howse.”
A pause....
“Eddie, you need a wife....”
“Eddie, why don’t you have a wife?”
Finally Eddie had stopped laughing to gather his wits and reply...
“Uh...I don’t know, Isabel.”
By this point, Esther was reaching for Isabel, telling her “that’s enough” while poorly concealing her own laughter and her daughter's precocious assessment of Eddie's life.
Poor Eddie has been in college and residency for eight years now, and he’s hardly had time to eat or sleep, let alone get a wife. Hopefully he will find a perfect one soon, and heed Isabel’s insistent encouragement to that end.