Spring Falls

And there goes the snow. Just like that, winter loosens its icy grip and the waters rage through Hog's Back Falls once again ... nearly cresting the "hog's back" itself — that ridge of limestone you can see from the river. We glance at these Falls from the car maybe a dozen times a week all year round. But we park and get out to look just once. On a sunny weekend morning in late March or early April, we walk the length of pathway around the rapids, and we marvel at the volume and power of the spring run-off. Sam says, "I could stand and watch this all day..." Amazing.

Spilled Paint

One thing few people notice about me is that I have heterochromia. More specifically, central and sectoral heterochromia. It's not serious, but it does make it hard to fill in that little box on a driver's licence that asks "Eye colour." It would seem that during this particular genetic struggle, my mom's brown eyes lost the war, but they won a few battles.

And so I have dad's green eyes, but with several haphazard brown freckles (as I've always thought of them) and a brown ring around the pupil. It's apparently uncommon in humans, but vets see a lot of this sort of variegated iris pattern. Hmm. I've always gone with "hazel"—but I've since learned I'm a fraud and should have been saying "green" all along. The secondary colour in heterochromia is reportedly beside the point. Sorry, Mom.

Anyways, my odd eyes are noticeable only after a really good cry or when I stare into the sun, which I enjoy equally rarely. So it's no surprise that Sam just recently became aware of my genetic mutation and close eyeball relation to Border Collies, Turkish Angoras, and palomino horses. Sitting together on the couch on a bright winter morning, he suddenly caught my face in his hands to still my movement, leaned in close and asked, "What is that in your eyes!?" Geneology, baby.

Sam's got Jeremy's green eyes straight up, and they're gorgeous. I tried to think of a way to describe them ("Like the sea after a storm...") and told him he was lucky to have such big beautiful eyes. He tried to return the compliment, saying "Your eyes are nice, too. They look like, well, green eyes... but like somebody accidentally spilled some brown paint in there." Clean up in Iris Two.

It could be worse. This is partial heterochromia. If it had been complete, I'd have one fully brown eye and one fully green eye. And that's just spiders-from-mars freaky. For now, we're having fun coming up with new descriptions of my mixed eye colour. My fave so far: "Time-to-clean-the-fish-tank green."

Spider Tale

The other night, Sam was taking a long, hot tub before bed, happily playing with action figures and minding his own business, when he spotted a spider on the ceiling.

“Mommy or daddy”, he called out, in a calm voice, just reporting in. “There’s a spider in the bathroom!” Jeremy was watching hockey all the way upstairs and I was creating an online photo album all the way downstairs. So, between us, we were unconcerned. And busy. We simply answered, “Okay!”

A little more splashing and then Sam calls out again, this time not so breezily, “I think it’s a Daddy Long Legs. And it’s crawling onto the pile of towels!” Again, his distracted parents answer, “That’s alright! He’s not hurting anyone!” or something along those lines.

A little more splashing and then Sam calls out, this time with some measure of agitation, “I’m actually not that comfortable with being in the bathroom with a spider!”

This is enough to jolt me from the mesmerizing task at hand. Of course! Doesn’t the spider come washing out of the water spout in the children’s song? Who wants to be in the vicinity for that? Gives me the willies now that I'm thinking about it.

“I’m on my way, Sam!” I call out, climbing the stairs, adding “I understand exactly how you feel!”

But then he offers this additional confession, which shows we’re not quite on the same page after all. “It’s just that I’m afraid that when I use the toilet, the spider might get up my bum. Then I’d have a spider inside of me…”

Oh.

Shame that Mr. Daddy Long Legs had taken advantage of the ample opportunity to escape. Now we don’t know where that creepy spider is...