CHANGE 3

It is bright and sunny today, and as I went to lean into my bathroom mirror to put some kind of face crap on my face, a slice of late-afternoon light crossed my eyes, making them seem translucent and otherworldly, sort of like very thin sea glass. It looked striking and pretty, I will say, as my eyes are a nice feature to me, light green with lots of little spikes of yellow. I have not nice features too, such as saddlebags that could carry the mail of at least ten Western States. But the eyes, they are good.

My eyes were not always green with yellow spikes. They were blue, up until sometime when I was a teenager. Not blue-green or green-blue, straight blue. I had no idea that something like that could change so profoundly in what I thought were pretty set things.

As I spent a few seconds looking at the sunshine on my eyes, I wondered if other seemingly-permanent things in you can change so radically, temperament or personality or intelligence, something like blue eyes, that you are born with. Do you know it if something changes, or not? Can others see it in you, as clearly as blue to green-with-yellow-spikes? Can you cause these kinds of things to happen yourself? Was it pre-determined in my DNA? Is everything?

I know my eyes will fade in time. The green will become gray-green, muted, watery like a muddy tidepool on a cloudy day, unremarkable, old. Will that happen to any of the rest of what is, me?