My hazel eyes let in just the right amount of light, with enough bronze to block out the sky and enough green to add delight. The rays of fresh rust nestle up against the branches of pine, all enclosed in a ring of ripe olive. A confusion of color that exists in only 5% of the world’s population.
Would I no longer contend with my mild body dysmorphia if I was only my eyes? Two slick spheres the color of a terrestrial starburst, instead of a corporeal accumulation of limbs and lips, belly and neck, chest and head. I’d not conceal my flesh from the gaze of others, or worry what they thought. Instead, I’d flaunt my ocular appeal. I’d pull apart the skin lids that curtain the windows of my soul to show off these oiled irises. But I am not just eye, and don’t enjoy reading Bataille.
Jim’s eyes are blue. Blue like his mother’s and my mother’s too. Blue like only one of my grandfather’s eyes, as the other was hazel like mine. Blue like 10% of the world and 25% of Americans.
A few Fridays ago, when the morning was grey, and the noon hour was indigo, Jim and I walked out of a grocery store into a midday parking lot. Since grocery stores are well-lit, we didn’t experience the transient adaptation of leaving a matinee movie, with that sharp and shocking change from black to white, from dark to bright, from blind to sight. But it was still brighter than inside, or more naturally bright; the difference between the faked daylight of a Doctor’s office and the reality of a sun-soaked open field.
The doors closed behind us, and we emerged from under the overhang to be completely consumed by the day. Jim’s hand suddenly tore from the cart as his forearm jerked to his face. His body ricocheted back, a hockey player bouncing hard off the boards. His feet moved forward but his head kept recoiling, trying to block the light from his eyes in any number of ways, but it was never enough. The sun kept up its attack. Both hands were now on his face, so I took the cart and, calmly aghast, asked, “What is happening?” He’d forgotten his sunglasses he told me. As he flailed in the contained space of his own being, I realized that I’d never seen him outside without sunglasses. His face morphed back and forth between expressions of agony and escape as if all the emotional and physical pain of his life was being funneled straight into the constriction of his pupil. The photophobia tore like talons. Then a sizzle and sear of heat, trying to evaporate the pools of his face. I handed him my glasses after he waved me off a couple of times because he receives help as easily as a dream receives touch, which is poorly. Once his pupils came back on-line and the protective but severe tears stopped producing, he put the groceries in the trunk and returned to himself.
Both of us are 49, on the tremorous lip of age, waiting to be swallowed by the throaty descent of time. We are not old. We are not young. But really who can say they are only one or the other? We are all ages at once.
Jim is strong, capable, and ready, but for a split second, he was Debilitation. Even the beauty of our bodies can be a weakness. And my ugly weakness in that moment was that I was terrified of a time when we are old, or sick, or thrashing about in the blindness of vulnerability. So I took an emotional blink and a physical breath, and when I opened my eyes, all I saw were his. Blue and deep and looking at me purposefully. Sustained eye contact does not come easy to me, but Jim’s gaze holds me, and I realized I have nothing to fear because we both have profound sight.
I really really love this. So entrancing.
This is lovely!