"He has your eyes"

He wears them beautifully. I wish I could slap on some waterproof SPF 90 and take a swim in his deep blue irises. (Does that sound like I'm complimenting my own eyes? I don't mean to, vain though I am.)

I hope against hope that he only has my eyes on the outside, and that the important "seeing" parts of his eyes come from his daddy.

I am horribly nearsighted. Whenever someone complains, "I have horrible vision," I throw down. "What's your prescription?" Inevitably, it's: "Negative two!" "Negative one point five!" even "Negative five!" to which I scoff "ha-HA! Negative ten in contacts, negative thirteen in glasses!"

It's a contest (yes, I'm competitive about it - one must maintain a sense of humor about these things) that I almost always win. Oh, I know there are negative-twenties out there who have bragging rights on me, but as far as folks that you meet on the street, my eyeballs are as long as any you'll see. Lasik is not an option for me. Eyeball transplant is, but I don't think it's been invented yet (Matt, this is how we will make our fortune!)

So. Seven years ago this week, I had a retinal detachment in my right eye (I can only imagine that my eye, in its quest to continue to stretch and grow, finally took a bit of retina with it kicking and screaming) and a tear in my left. Both were repaired by a doctor with a laser (a very nice and super attractive doctor) in what I call "The most painful supposedly-painless outpatient procedure in existence." I'd sooner go through childbirth again. You have to force yourself to keep your eye wide open while a bright greenish white light burns the back of your eyeball. The next day I had a bloody spot on my sclera (and the day after that Matt proposed to me in NYC - a whole 'nother blog). Anyway, I now have a permanent blind spot in the top left corner of my field of vision in my right eye. It bobs and flashes and kind of looks like a tiny moonlit pond up there, but not the romantic kind. (You know how moonlit ponds are black but their little ripply waves are shiny and silvery and glittery?)

Anyway, I haven't had a tear or detachment since, but I do have degeneration, so about every six months to a year I get a new flasher or floater and have to go in to the doctor to get it checked out. The other day I noticed an eyelash-shaped flashy black thing to the right of the center of my field of vision, so I went in to my very nice new ophthalmologist, who said that my retinas are fine, but "there IS some activity."

Activity? Apparently there is some kind of fancy protoplasm that fills your eyeballs called the "vitreous" something-or-something. This part of my eye is gradually drying up and shrinking away like a grape turning raisin (I think everyone's does this, but maybe not) and because my eyes are so long this has the potential to cause a chunk of my retina to sort of collapse into the negative space. Am I right, doctor friends? In lay-ophthalmic-hypochondriac's terms, anyway?

So. I'm writing all of this to say that this is why my heart aches a little when people say "He has your eyes." Because I love that he looks like me, but I don't want him to have to go through what I've been through with my vision.

Plus, I kind of wanted him to have his daddy's light-green eyes because they are my favorite eyes ever.

I'm dilated and Leo is swinging: