A Man Once Told Me - Julie Farrar

A man once told me that I had beautiful blue eyes. When that happened I wasn’t a young ingénue (does anybody use that word anymore?) and I wasn’t single. I was married, and harried, and deep into full on “mom mode.” We had never had sex, were not talking about having sex, and in this lifetime would never have sex with each other. There was no advantage on either side from that observation. He simply said it, I laid my money on the counter for my soda, and I sat down to eat my lunch. Yet a moment like that can tilt the world’s axis ever so slightly.

It was a long time before I stood before my bathroom mirror to consider his compliment. I stared, glasses on then glasses off then on again. They weren’t the deep lapis lazuli of Elizabeth Taylor, which I took to be the standard for blueness. I did see, however, a hint of sapphire on a good day when they’re not dulled by the dark circles of sleep deprivation. They could remember how to laugh if they tried hard. A few lines were forming, but not unmanageable. When was the last time that I had looked into my own eyes? The glasses I always wore might have been a shield or wall at some time in the past. I don’t remember. When everyone else was getting contacts I never bothered because (as I told everyone) they seemed so much of a bother. I never saw these eyes as worthy of celebrating. And now contacts seemed pointless since I was at the age that I owned multiple pairs of glasses for seeing at multiple distances.

If someone had said those words to me in the past, they were long gone. But now, with so many years behind me, someone looked and saw something I had missed. So I stood at the mirror and looked until I got comfortable looking into my own eyes. At least once a week I perform this new exercise – I look for the I in the mirror. There’s no telling what else I might see that’s worth a small accolade.