I can’t stop worrying at the whisker during my shift. Not quite on my chin and not quite on my neck, it’s on what can best be described as my gullet. I repeatedly drag my thumb gently across its tiny sharpness and feel it snap back. It’s stiff and about half a centimeter long, just enough to grab if I’m careful, in a spot that will be hard to see under the shadow of my chin. Thirty-five minutes to my next break and a mirror. The spot starts to burn as I dig at it with my thumbnail, attempting to pull it out with my fingernails, futile but irresistible.
My daughter Molly perfected the art of tweezing by the age of ten. She sat on the side of the tub and studied me as I shaped my eyebrows and checked for chin strays. I wore no makeup in those days but did make the effort to pare down the thickness of my brows and remove the occasional rogue whisker, a tiny nod to the societal pressure to conform to a feminine ideal. She was a curious child in general, but never asked why I was doing it, taking it as a given that this was something mommies did.
I gave her an old pair of tweezers to use while she kept me company in the bathroom. She carefully plucked tiny hairs from her arm, honing her technique. She taught herself to grab a hair at the skin and deftly snap her wrist back so it came out in one quick motion. She especially delighted in unearthing the stiffer hair that grew from a small mole on her upper arm.
“Look, Mommy. I got the fat one!” she said, holding it up for me to examine.
“You got a good one, baby. Nice work.”
My efforts work only about half the time, and I’m as likely as not to break the thing and leave a stub too small to pluck, necessitating a days-long wait until it’s long enough to try again. Molly has a knack for it.
By college, Molly had her own chin whiskers. She, too, carries sharp German tweezers—a gift from me—for plucking emergencies on the go. Once, at a friend’s graduation party, we noticed each other in the telltale pose of chin stroking and snuck off together to a heavily perfumed bathroom. I had a stiff black whisker on the right, and she a very short one just below her jawline in a spot she couldn’t see in the mirror. “Easy-peasy” she said as she deftly removed my offending nub. I snapped hers off with the sharp tweezers and hated that I’d disappointed her.
My chin and neck whiskers are now white and difficult to see with aging eyes. Molly is nearing 30 and building a life for herself many time zones away. I can’t remember the last time she plucked for me. The years are beginning to accelerate their pace, and the time is coming when I won’t be able to tame my own whiskers. Passports, planes, and a pandemic leave me wondering when we’ll see one another again. Our now virtual relationship makes the intimacy of tweezing together impossible. My heart aches.
Finally, my break. I unzip my handbag and dig for my tweezers as I trot to the restroom. I lurch to the mirror closest to the window, but the glass is blurry. Blindly, I aim for the tender spot and pull a thick, stiff white hair out by its root in one try. Easy-peasy.

Beth Duddy is an emerging writer who returned to her Philadelphia birthplace after lengthy stops in Vermont, San Francisco, and Portland, Maine. She mines her complex history and personal life for true stories that are at once entertaining, provocative, and moving. She has published numerous short stories and an erotic memoir under a pen name. Beth listens to her original, scratched classic rock albums while cooking, gardening, and playing Scrabble. She holds a BA in Journalism from Temple University and is a freelance copy editor.
Love it! I know Beth personally from her San Francisco days. I also have her other book of erotic tales.