Blue
Some things run deeper than they look…
“We did a really interesting topic in Biology today,” I tell Mum when I get back home.
“Oh, yes?” she says. “I could never follow Biology at school. What was it about?”
“The stuff we inherit from our parents,” I tell her, kicking my shoes off by the back door and fighting my rucksack over my shoulders.
She laughs. “Like the clock we got from your grandma?”
“No, silly,” I say. I’m laughing now as well; Mum can be really funny sometimes. “Like, how we look the same as our parents.”
“Oh, yes,” Mum replies. She points at the shoes I should’ve put away in the cupboard. “Tidy up those, first. And then could you come and lay the table, please?”
She’s frying sausages for our tea and they smell wonderful. We always have sausage, egg and chips for tea on Fridays. Mum calls it ‘Fry-day’, like that’s something funny. Dad laughs when she says it, because (he says) that’s what people in love do: they laugh at each other’s bad jokes.
“So, you know how you and Dad both have brown eyes?” I ask, lifting out three place mats and three glasses, one for each of us. “And so have Grandma J and Gee-pa… And Nana Dee-Dee? She had brown eyes, I remember.”
“Ye-es,” Mum says. She’s distracted, I can tell, rattling through drawers now in search of the fried-egg-flipper.
“And Grandad Jack?”
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“Erm? What about him?” she asks.
I never met Dad’s dad, but there’s lots of photographs of him. He was famous around Ilkley, after he saved a lad from drowning in the River Wharfe at the Strid near Bolton Abbey. He went straight in and pulled him out. Granddad Jack was a real hero, but Dad says he was crazy. There are super strong currents under the surface, Dad always says, so it can be dangerous if you jump in carelessly. Granddad was very lucky, Dad says.
“He had brown eyes as well, didn’t he?” I say.
“That’s right,” Mum agrees. “He did.”
“And so do Auntie Vee and Auntie Pippa.”
I’m counting relatives off on my fingers now; Vee and Pippa are Mum’s sisters. I have to stop for a moment, to put the knives and forks down properly around the three place mats.
“And then there’s Uncle Gerry,” I continue, lifting the ketchup down. Gerry is Dad’s brother. “He’s got brown eyes as well, hasn’t he?”
“He does indeed, yes,” Mum says.
“So, I was wondering…?”
“Yes?”
I take a deep breath and decide to jump in. “I was wondering why I’m the only one with blue eyes!?”
Mum is really still now, and for the first time I realise that Dad was listening from the hallway. He chuckles and walks over to Mum and puts his arms around her.
“C’mon Suze,” he says. That’s Mum’s name, Susan. “We knew we’d have to explain one day, didn’t we? I guess that today’s the day, eh!?”
Mum smiles up at Dad, finishes dishing up tea, and then turns to me. “Well,” she begins. “It’s like this…”
