My wife and I look basically the same.
We're both Italian/Irish, favoring the Italian side, darker skin, brown hair, dark eyes. It has never been out of the ordinary for someone to think we are siblings. Or for people to think that my wife, is my mother's daughter. Young pictures of my father-in-law, look a lot like me, now.
It was a lock. We were going to have a little brown baby, with brown eyes.
And while my wife was pregnant, that's when we fell in love with this song from Travis.
Hear the song on Youtube.
Fran Healy had just had a child, too, and sang about the day he was born:
"You've got my eyes."
The only thing up for debate was, would our daughter have my brown eyes, or my wife's brown eyes?
Then she was born.
It's not uncommon for a newborn to arrive with blue eyes. And these eyes were blue. But yeah, they'd probably change to brown.
Right?
No. Months later, blue eyes. Years later, blue eyes.
It's not genetically impossible. My mother-in-law has blue eyes. And my Dad has blue eyes. Recessive genes do happen.
Today's her 4th birthday, and her eyes are still blue. My brother-in-law calls my daughter, "Blueberry eyes."
It was a good, early, lesson in parenting.
Even though you know better, when you have kids, there is a part of you that wants them to be a Mini-You. You hope they look like you and act like you and love the same things you love and become you, only better.
But it doesn't matter how much of your DNA they have. It doesn't matter how much you try to nurture them to be a certain way. It doesn't matter.
They are not a little you. And if you try to force that upon them, they'll spend the rest of your life, proving just the opposite.
There are so many things I want my daughter to see and do and be and love. And I'll guide her toward those things, hoping that she'll find some resonance in them.
But I learned on the day she was born, this day four years ago, that decidedly, she would see the world through her own eyes.
Happy birthday, little one!
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