Brown-Eyed Girl

Brown eyes have an unfair, bad reputation. On the online baby forums, mommies discuss the likelihood that little Madylyyn or Aidan/Cayden/Jayden/Hayden will have Mama’s ocean-blue eyes, or if Dad spoiled the gene pool with his poop-brown ones. With almost Hitler-esque intensity, they hope against hope that blue eyes win the genetic war. I mean, really? Brown eyes are THAT undesirable? I admit. I was somewhat guilty of this eye-color game, but I had a reallllllllly good reason. If you’ve ever met Chris, Charlotte’s other genetic contributor, you know that he has the biggest, prettiest green eyes. I do not exaggerate. We have had our Taco Bell order interrupted by the cashier declaring, “You have unbelievably pretty eyes.” We have had a winery owner remember us—one year later!—from Chris’s green eyes. They are insanely huge and gorgeous and distinct. So of course my shallow side wanted Charlotte to inherit them. My dad also has green eyes, so I thought that there was a decent chance that Chris and my offspring would also go green. Based on our own eye colors, our siblings’ eye colors, and our parents’ eye colors, an online eye-color predictor site estimated that Charlotte had a 50% chance of having brown eyes, a 40% chance of having green eyes, and a 10% chance of having blue eyes. Well, obviously brown eyes won. But is this a bad thing? Soon after Charlotte’s eyes changed from blue to brown (she was very young), I was in the waiting room at the pediatrician’s office with my girl, who was gazing around the room from her perch in her car seat. A little girl—maybe 5 or 6 years old—came over to gawk at her (little kids LOVE babies, I’ve learned). “Is your baby a girl or a boy?” she asked. “She’s a little girl,” I answered. At this, Charlotte looked up at the girl and smiled. “She has chocolate eyes!” the girl exclaimed. She then turned to face me and very excitedly pointed to her own eyes. “I have chocolate eyes, too!” “You do!” I said, thinking this child’s mother was BRILLIANT for teaching her to love her own eyes by calling them chocolate. “You have SUCH pretty chocolate eyes.” “So does your baby,” the little girl diplomatically replied, before running out the door to join her mom. Since then, Charlotte has grown and become more herself. Her eyes have become bigger and brighter—and more chocolaty—than ever. I may have given her the brown, but Chris gave his girl’s eyes their huge size and intensity, not to mention the to-die-for long, dark eyelashes that frame them. As a result, in spite of Charlotte not having blue or green eyes, this kid’s eyes are almost always the first thing someone comments about when they see her. They are big and pretty, yes, but they’re also lively and sparkly and full of humor. In fact, those big chocolate eyes melt my heart just as fast and as hopelessly as Chris’s big green eyes. Thus, I think we need to have a brown-eyed-girl revolution. Brown eyes are not the color of poo or mud. No, brown eyes are the color of chocolate, coffee, cinnamon! And, as my final effort to promote brown eyes as Special and Pretty and Worth Wanting, I ask my readers this: Is there a Van Morrison song called “Blue-Eyed Girl”? No, there is not. No sha-la-la-la-la-la for blue or green or amber or hazel or purple or red. Just brown-eyed girls.