His Eyes Were Blue

This story contains sensitive subject matter, such as a car accident.

“They say when you sleep, it’s a lot like dying. Everything is dark.”

“But what about dreams? Dreams aren’t dark. They have tons of color.” I would ask my grandfather. He would smile from his pipe, blowing the smoke above my six year old head. Just always out of reach.

“Most people dream in black and white.”

“Not me,” I shook my head violently. “I dream in color.”

“Well then, you must have a very vivid imagination.”

“What does vivid mean?”

“Wild.”

“Mom says I am her wild child she can’t control.” I continue to stack the Legos I have strewn across the floor. All the colors clash with one another. Even the house I am building is multi-colored. 

His smile returns. But this time it’s in his eyes. They were blue and they had a habit of lighting up with a twinkle.

“She is one to talk. She was my wild child.”

“Is that why you don’t like daddy?”

The smile disappears. “I never said I didn’t like your father.”

“Daddy says it all the time. He thinks you blame him for running off with mom and for them having me.”

“Well, you being born was the best thing that happened in a long time.”

“Why’s that?”

“Like I said,” he nods in rhythm to the rocking of the creaky wooden chair. “When you sleep, it’s a lot like dying.”

My grandfather went to sleep two years later. And I guess he was right, sleeping was a lot like dying. Because he never woke up.

I remember how mom cried at the funeral.

Dad wanted to comfort her, but years of awkward blood around her side of the family made him stoic, standing like a statue in the back corner of the church. At the cemetery, he tried to blend in with a tree and sadly watched as Mom threw herself on the coffin and Aunt Mary had to peel her off.

It rained that day. And my shoes got wet and my socks turned squishy. They were black Mary Jane’s and they were sponges. I remember shivering even though it was summertime.

The day was so overcast, it felt like I was sleeping standing up, dreaming in black and white. There was no blue sky, or a bright yellow sun. Everyone was dressed in black. And even the coffin was gray.

The only color I thought I saw was the blue in grandpa’s eyes. I could have sworn he winked at me right before they closed the lid, and lowered him into the ground.

And that was the day I decided, I would never sleep again.

When I did doze off, my dreams became black and white. All the color left the day that grandpa left.

Mom became restless around the house. She had always taken care of grandpa, as if making up for the years she drove him up the wall with her teenage rebellion that never she never seemed to grow out of.

When grandpa was alive, she seemed accepting of the house. Of our town. And of life. She had something to keep her grounded, even though she was the sore thumb of the town.

She was the one who would come home and switch the stereo on and dance with me in the kitchen, the music shaking the walls.

Simply because she wanted to.

The neighbors would get mad and complain to dad the second he pulled into the driveway.

He, of course, would just smile politely while lighting up a cigarette and loosening his tie. And then he would immediately walk inside, turn the music louder and spin mom across the floor.

Now, the house grew eerily quiet.

As if the music fell asleep too.

Every night, come bedtime at eight o’clock, I would fight both mom and dad, insisting my bed would eat me alive. I would stare out the window and count the stars.

But then I would get bored and sneak downstairs to the stereo. I just wanted to hear it come alive again.

Legos became my outlet. Colorful bricks that made their way to the ceiling in tall skyscrapers and wild mazes.

I wanted to run away. I wanted to leave.

There was no brightness anymore. This town had always been sad, but having grandpa here, gave me something to smile about.

Mom said when she was my age she felt the same way. She hated this town too. The way people talked. Especially about her and dad.

I had never met my father’s dad. He didn’t want anything to do with me, mom said. And she wasn’t afraid to say it. She wasn’t afraid of him, as opposed to the whole town who was petrified of him and the power he wielded in money.

Mom said he controlled dad, keeping him in the family business, but not even knowing what the word family meant.

Dad didn’t seem to mind. It brought home a paycheck and it kept the house going where he could be with mom. She was his one true passion. Not the numbers he formulated throughout the day. Not the promises of promotions if he could just get his act together and stop thinking life is anything more than a business transaction.

For months I was an insomniac. Mom got so frustrated with me. If I drove her crazy before with my antics, I really drove her crazy now.

School was unbearable. The teachers made me get tested for ADHD. “No child can possibly have that much energy. The poor thing just can’t focus.”

When the comments turned to blaming my mother for my poor sleep quality, she pulled me out of school cursing the principal with a cigarette in one hand and mine in the other, dragging me out the front door. She spit on the front step and it landed in a little puddle.

I added to it with a gob of my own. I didn’t like the school or their uniforms anyway. 

“You’re going to be homeschooled. And we’re leaving this town. I’ve had enough.”

Dad nodded his head, supporting my mother in all of her wild thoughts. I think that’s what he especially loved about her. She matched the crazy he always had deep down inside of him, but had always been to scared to show. She gave him an outlet to be who he truly was.

And I was just beginning to contribute my inherited crazy, sprinkling on a little more each night I couldn’t sleep.

We sold the house that winter. I couldn’t believe someone actually bought it.

The house was a conformed two story, three bedroom house on a quiet street, where each blade of grass knew its place. It was the neighborhood that didn’t appreciate smiles, waves, or loud music coming from kitchen stereos.

And most of all, the house was gray. And I liked colorful houses.

We left for Moab, Utah. Mom said there were canyons out there that could swallow us whole. I was thrilled.

That’s where we would start. And who knows where we could go from there.

Dad just smiled and drove on. As long as he had mom, he was happy.

We drove for hours.

The sun was starting to set and mom suggested we stop at the next hotel. Dad nodded, yawning as he stretched his arms above his head, the steering wheel being guided with his knee.

“Agreed. I am beat.”

My forehead rested against the glass of the backseat of the old station wagon. It was grandpa's before he gave up driving and handed it off to my mom as a gift for having me.

“Take her on adventures. God knows you’ll need to get the energy out of her somehow. She’s a wild child. Just like you.”

Maybe it was on account grandma had gypsy in her blood. Of course every time I asked grandpa about it he would roll his eyes.

“That’s just a story. Your grandmother was not part gypsy.”

“So who was grandma?” I would ask, imagining she was a gypsy queen, standing boldly on a mountain with her colorful gypsy scarf blowing in the wind.

He would always clamp his lips around his pipe and not say another word.

I remember sneaking into his bedroom one time. It had always been the one room that was off limits. One side of the bed looked as though it had never been touched.

He walked in behind me and simply said, “When you sleep, it’s like you’re dead.”

My six year old brain could only imagine goblins came in grandma’s dream and chased her away.

That night, driving to Utah, the evening sky was purple with white stars coming out to twinkle. They reminded me of grandpa’s eyes.

The sign advertising the hotel up ahead whizzed past the car.

But not as fast as the truck whizzing down the highway in the opposite direction.

The truck that crossed the median and ran straight into grandpa’s station wagon where dad was holding mom’s hand and I was wide awake in the back seat.

I remember there were sounds. Not many that I could decipher, but I remember there was noise. In the distance there were lights flashing blue and red.

That was the only color I saw before everything went dark.

Grandpa always said when you sleep it is like you’re dead.

I finally slept for the first time in a long time.

Just like the driver of the truck that hit us. He had been driving for twelve hours straight.

Everything was calm and quite. More peaceful than I expected.

There were no vivid dreams as I remembered having as a child.

There were no pirate ships or castles with fairy god mothers. There were no goblins chasing me around.

I guess that’s what happens when you get older. The storybook tales slowly fade away, as everything does. I guess as you age, you come to realize, life is kind of like sleep walking. Once the magic dies down in your dreams, it tends to fade from life itself.

It was dark. And there was nothing.

Until I saw smoke drift in the air above my head, just out of reach.

I looked over to see grandpa rocking away in his aged chair with his pipe in his hand. His blue eyes twinkled and I sighed with relief.

Finally some color.

“What do you say kiddo? I told you. Sleeping is a lot like dying.”