A few weeks ago I lost my tweezers. The loss was so traumatic that I couldn’t even blog about it, for these are no ordinary tweezers.

I got these tweezers nearly eleven years ago, when my first husband worked at a lumber mill. One of the guys he worked with made them and sold them to the other mill workers to use for pulling wood splinters out of their hands. As you can see, they’re very sharp and pointed and they can grab stray hairs like nobody’s business. And I can’t replace them.

I’ve been lost without my tweezers. My eyebrows have grown bushy and asymmetrical. I’ve done the best I could with grocery store tweezers, but they just don’t compare to my extraordinary tweezers.

One day last summer I dropped my tweezers through the crack in the porch’s floorboards, and my heart nearly stopped. I begged Lydia for her help in retrieving them, but she knew she had me in a tight spot. She did crawl under the porch and get them, but only after I agreed to pay her 50 kronor (about $7.50). It was money well spent.

If only I had known that the joy I felt that summer day would be so short-lived I might have tried to appreciate my tweezers a little more. These past weeks I’ve been kicking myself for being so careless, for losing something I’ve carried with me wherever I went (and I went a lot of places) for more than ten years.

I’ve been granted a reprieve, though. I found my tweezers yesterday. I actually gasped with delight and clapped my hand over my mouth in disbelief. It was such a dream come true that I scarcely dared believe my eyes. But it was true, and my brows are neatly groomed again. Thank goodness.