Familial Eyes

Is it age or tears that cause eye color to fade?

 

Looking in the mirror is not something I do often. Sure, I take a quick glance at my outfit before leaving the house, but really looking isn’t something I’ve done much since my single days. Today is the eighteenth anniversary of my father’s passing and I noticed that my eye color is fading.  They no longer match the brilliant emerald, warm brown and golden hazel I inherited from him. He was just ten years older than I am when he died. I don’t remember his eye color changing with age. My son has those same eyes, as does his father; sparkling hazel and full of mischief. 

My daughter’s eyes are bright blue, the shade of the sky I enjoy on a sunny day looking out over the Judean Mountains from my balcony. I wonder if it’s just a coincidence that both my firstborn and my parent’s firstborn inherited their father’s eyes. Probably not since my first husband’s eyes were more of a bluish hazel.

The younger of my two brothers also shares our father’s eye color and when I saw him in July they still looked as intense as Dad’s. But he is nine years younger than me. My little sister and oldest brother have Mom’s dark brown eyes, as do their children. I’m fascinated at how the colors alternated in our family; first and third child with Dad’s and second and fourth with Mom’s eye color and shape. 

I speculate that there must be statistics in some databank regarding multi-generational eye color, and I might find them online, but right now I’m more concerned with the dulling of mine. What causes such a phenomenon? Age? Stress? Disease (God forbid)? Or is it just the result of the many tears I’ve shed missing my father today?