Someone told me once that lighter colored eyes–the blues and greens and greys–are more sensitive to the sun than darker eyes, and the reason for this is the way that irises scatter and transmit light into the retina. For me, stepping out into the sun each day is so rough. I groan and gripe to myself every morning while attempting to shield my eyes until they’ve adjusted to what always seems like the most brutal brightness.  

I have the same greenish-grey eyes as my mother, although hers are now ash in a box now. After an incredibly courageous battle with leukemia, she passed away on a Tuesday this past June, the same time everything else around us had just started to come to life. Spring to spring. It all happened like some spinning, hazy dream. Still, nearly every morning while looking at my face in the mirror, for a few seconds I almost can’t tell if I’m looking at my eyes are hers.

A fear that developed in me soon after she died was forgetting her. Forgetting what she looked like, what she sounded like, how her hands felt when I held them. As seasons have gone by since she passed, though, this fear has begun to alleviate itself as I’ve recognized just how communicative bodies can be and truly are, in so many ways. I remember her when I’m looking into the mirror, when overhear someone speak with the same gentle inflection in their voices as hers, and almost every time I’m needing to shield my eyes from the sun.