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Special Eyes

Back when I first started blogging, I often read Dooce. There was much to learn and be inspired by from her writing. After she died, I have visited her blog sometimes, reading the older posts. Today, I read the one mostly about her daughter. These lines brought a smile to my face: 

Three years before she was born I was sitting across a table from her father at Canter’s Deli on Beverly Blvd. in Los Angeles and thought, “I want my children to inherit this man’s eyes.” Of the many ways she resembles her father, it is the color and the shape of her eyes that bear the hallmark gene of an Armstrong most.

J's father had the most beautiful eyes I have known any man to have. They were almost too beautiful to be a man's eyes. He wore glasses and that obscured the best feature of his face. In the early days of our marriage, I often asked him to remove his glasses so I could stare at his eyes. There was something dreamy and scary about looking at them directly. I knew I would never know this man - there would be things that would remain buried and lost to me forever. 

No matter how much I tried, I would only scratch at the surface of who he was. That made for an interesting challenge for me - what might it take to make such a man open up completely to the woman he had married. Was it love, acts of faith, devotion, trust - what did it take. Like Armstrong, when I found out that I was going to have a daughter, I particularly wished that she would have his eyes. My then my dream of becoming his best friend and confidante had long faded - it was already the beginning of the end. 

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