Perhaps I am partial but I have always marveled at my daughter’s beautiful eyes.  She truly looks as if she could have stepped out of a Renoir painting, perhaps “Girl with pink bow.”  My mother was half-French; half-Irish and she definitely has the Gallic eyes of her ancestors.  Somehow, I see a lot of my husband in her eyes, perhaps it is because they are both so very dark.  I remember my mother telling me they’d calculated the odds of me having light eyes and it was over 1 in 100,000.  My half-Choctaw, half-German father had the deepest, darkest, bluest eyes I have ever seen.  They were framed by impossibly long, thick, jet black eyelashes while my very white mother had light brown eyes that perfectly matched her natural red hair.  She used to say she had no eyelashes or eyebrows.  She actually did, they were just white blonde.  So along I came right in the middle — very tanned skin, reddish blonde hair, and greenish eyes.  My husband has beautiful, thick brown hair and I realize my own gene pool.  Delusionally, I truly somehow thought I would have a blonde-haired, blue eyed child.  She did arrive that way, but her peach fuzz hair turned more auburn and her eyes went so dark it took the eye doctor a special light just to see her pupils.  I started having to wear glasses in the first grade, and I fervently hoped my little one wouldn’t have to so young.  Not that there is anything wrong with it — I just remember trying to keep my glasses pushed up whenever I looked down to read or I got too sweaty.  Looking at her for so long, I have always thought one eye was a little close set.  We’d taken her early on to an eye specialist and they tested her in kindergarten.  Thankfully she was always fine.  And then this year I got a call from the school nurse.  I could tell from her tone it was not good.  At first I feared she’d broken another bone.  Instead she reluctantly informed me that my child was legally blind in her GOOD eye (20/100) and 20/200 in her other.  Everyone at her school seemed shocked, as she had never squinted or exhibited any discernible trouble seeing.  I was assured the tests were correct, as it was measured by some gazillion dollar computer.  Trying not to bawl, I scheduled my first grader with an eye specialist.  It would seem we would be seeing his son; both of whom specialized in strabismus, a misalignment of the eyes.  Upon her initial exam, the doctor informed me our child needed surgery:  not glasses; not eye patches; just a surgical procedure that would entail snipping the insides of her eye muscles close to her nose as well as the ones on bottom.  I was told the surgery had been around for decades and the rate of success was high.  Also, the need for having to repeat the procedure was low.  I thought I was prepared for her surgery.  Although we are blessed to have a very healthy child she has had laser surgery twice on a facial birthmark at around two, endured an endoscopy and colonoscopy at just four to learn she is gluten intolerant, and at five she broke her elbow on the monkey bars at school, resulting in an hour and forty-five minute surgery and stainless steel pins which would be removed only with the aide of pliers sometime later.  This was a twenty minute surgery which felt like forever.  She was extremely sick from the anesthesia and the whites of her eyes filled completely with blood.  We have been stared at a lot in the grocery store but mostly from adults who seemed genuinely concerned.  Like my mother, her namesake is tough as nails!  She rebuffed insults and endured gawks with equal panache.  The school nurse did call me to come get her the first day back because she was worried my girl might fall.  She still has “crooked” vision and sees two of things, but the doctor says her eyes are working for the first time to see in tandem.  And to think we had absolutely no idea.  The great American author Helen Keller, who was the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree at a time when most women were not deemed worthy of an education, once said this:  “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”  I am so grateful to God that my sensitive, caring child has kind, intelligent eyes with which to see.