My Daughter's Eyes

My daughter has my pinky fingers; they curve in at the middle joint. I think, although I can’t be certain yet, she seems to have my husband’s nose. She has my skin, eczema and all, my lips, my ears except for the lobes, they are all McHugh. She has my husband’s smarts and, so far, his healthy blood. Lord knows where she gets her height.

But her eyes. Who’s eyes are those? For a while I thought they were mine. But no, they are not mine, nor my husband’s. The shape, the gaze, the color, they are another’s. But whose? It didn’t begin to worry at me until recently when my growing little girl paused in her play and look up at me in a quiet, calm, old soul way, totally unlike her boisterous, free-spirit norm. It bothered me, disturbed me in the way a tune you catch a whisper of bothers you when you try to recall the words, or a name you know you know, but it escapes you at that moment. Your mind mulls over it, repeating itself in your subconscious, relentless and frustrating. I know those eyes. Where have I seen those eyes before?

The other day I was spring cleaning our living room. I have several old time photos of my Pop-Pop and his wife, a woman I’ve never met but have heard much about. I have three black and white photographs, varying sizes, of her on our piano. The question begs to be asked, “Why do I have a picture of someone I don’t even know, much less multiple pictures on display?” Perhaps we save things for future relevance, not just past mementos. Regardless, display them I do. In one picture, the smallest, she is a young mother holding her tiny crippled son. She is beautiful, stylishly dressed and poised, yet everything about her in that picture suggests a fierce protectiveness, a quiet determination. She is a lioness. I know of her all night vigil in prayer when he was a baby with a high fever. They thought he might die. Pop-Pop thought he should. Knowing Uncle Barry’s sad life, I wonder. God does all things well; I have not His mind nor Pop-Pop His ways.

In the largest picture I have of her she is a post WWII wife of a prominent New York banker, the man standing beside her, my Pop-Pop. Her head is tilted back slightly, lips compressed into a thin line. I’ve seen my mother, her granddaughter, do the same thing, I can’t help but wonder if I do that too. It’s a sign of “staying the course”, no matter the cost, of making herself do something she doesn’t want to do, but feels she must. Her hands are clasped tightly in front of her. Pop-Pop looks strange too. They look like fashion mannequins, stiff and cold, maybe it’s the weather. A closer look reveals something else entirely. Though they stand side by side, instead of holding hands, their sides are fused together. It seems they are pressing on each other, communicating something only they know. They look alone in the world. They look shell shocked.

In this picture, she’s no longer young, or beautiful, though my Pop-Pop looks only about 30 years old. Here, she is sick, and getting sicker. She is dying of cancer. There’s thinness to her frame, her lovely rounded cheeks are sunken, gaunt with dark circles under her eyes, accentuated by the black and white of the photo. I feel I know their thoughts…will this be our last picture together?

The final picture I have of her is her cameo picture. I love that photograph. I could stare at it for hours. I was told it was a picture she had made especially for Pop-Pop when they were engaged. Her hair is short, dark and wavy, slightly frizzy, perhaps the effect of the newly invented “perm”, and pinned back with a single black bobby pin. She looks like a debutante out of a Nancy Drew novel. Only she is mysteriously dark, dark hair, olive skin and the eyes, yes the eyes, That’s where I’ve seen my child’s eyes before. Thick brows and under her brows, wide lids, wide horizontally, not vertically like mine. There also seems to be very little depth to the lid, as though the upper and lower brow and lower lid are separated by only creases, not dimension.

I cannot know the color of her eyes. They are not brown, of that I’m certain. So I look at my child’s irises, and as they are the same eyes, I have no trouble ascribing their hue to her great-great grandmother’s eyes. A casual glance at my daughter’s eyes, one might think them simply pale, but they are rather like the billowing storm clouds rolling in off the bay during a summer squall instead of the ominous thunderstorms of changing seasons. They are gray-blue and very easy to pass over unless you take a moment to look. Oh, sweet sight for those who take the time. Beautiful.

Mona Lisa should have had eyes like these, for all the fuss ascribed her portrait.

Comparatively, Mona Lisa’s expression is placid, ambivalent, dare I say, empty? My great-grandmother’s eyes are direct. There is honesty in her gaze which life seemed to tuck away from view in the later pictures. Her eyes exude intelligence. I always get the sensation she is asking questions with her eyes. Perhaps “ask” is too polite: she seems to be pulling for answers, not her own, she’s found them, but yours. There is a genuine feeling of her wanting to know, wanting to know you. Not just general answers about you, but the big ones, the ones some never come to know, the ones Pop-Pop died not knowing.

There is another in my family, named after this distant relative. A perfect complement to her grandmother’s name, she was bold and sensual, sensitive and loving, and the brightest light in my small world. She was my aunt and how I loved her. Charismatic, she drew people to her without ever trying. She was into back cracking, crushing hugs. I can feel the essence of these hugs 30 years later. Her laugh, I can still hear it when I close my eyes, loud and full. She knew how to laugh. The last time I saw her, I hugged her gently, carefully and everyone was quiet…so quiet. I miss her. I named my daughter after her, middle name only. Her grand-daughter will be born this month. She too will be named after her, middle name only.

What is her name? On the bottom of my great-grandmother’s cameo are two of the most elegant words in the English language. So elegant, in fact, they are married together in one of the most prominent tales in English literature. A tale so beautiful and tragic only one name could be given to the heroine of such a love story.

Words penned to her future husband said simply, “Love, Catherine”.