Mis Escritos Y Pensamientos

Today, at work, I had a conversation about eyes. A certain co-worker was telling how everyone in his family had blue eyes, and I mean everyone, ever. When he took home his future wife, who happened to be part Native American, the first thing that his grandmother did was look at her and say, "She doesn't have blue eyes."

The question I've been asked so many times in life is, "What color are your eyes?" To which I chuckle and answer, "Well, they change." It's true, my eyes change colours. Some days they are more green, while others, blue is the colour of choice. As I get older, they don't seem to change color as much as they once did. However, my eyes seem to have a tendency to cause problems at times.

One of the first times it was an issue was in El Salvador. "Me gusta tus ojos!" "Tus ojos son muy bonita!" These sentences would follow me as I walked up and down the sidewalks of the school. Ack, I didn't know how to respond to such proclamations, so I kept walking, with my head down hoping to blend in. I had arrived, happy that I had dark hair, just like everyone else, not even thinking that some of the people I was working with had never seen eyes that weren't brown. Slyly the boys would hold up their camera phones and try to take my picture as I walked by. I was so embarrassed. Another day I was walking by a group of them talking with my translator. He told me, that they had never seen eyes like mine, and proceeded to make me stand there while they just looked, fascinated at my blue/green eyes. I felt like some new kind of animal that had just been discovered, while people fawned over it.

I think that the attention that most surprised me actually occurred later that fall. I was teaching a college class, and in the class were two students from Turkey. As I was lecturing, they were sitting there, speaking in their own language, when suddenly, one of them gets up, walks to the front of the room, and stands there looking at me. I'm a little flustered by this time, but continue to lecture. The student finally turned around and went back to his seat, where he proceeded to continue his conversation with his friend. Then he interrupts the lecture and says to me, "Teacher, what color are your eyes?" Obviously blue/green eyes are not common in Turkey either.

Who knew that the color of eyes could be such a big deal. These situations remind me of a story that I read once about a missionary named Amy Carmichael. She was a missionary to India. A story is told of how, as a child she had brown eyes, but always wanted blue ones. She even prayed and asked God to make her eyes change to beautiful blue ones. Later in life, she had to disguise herself as a native of India, in order to save children. To do so she had to dye her skin dark with coffee. It was then that she realized if God had given her blue eyes, she would never have been able to blend in as a native of the country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Carmichael

Who knew that the color of one's eyes could be such a big deal? So, tell me...what color are your eyes, or what eye story do you know?