“But we do have a name,” my mother said. “A beautiful name. A name his father has given him. Samuel. We’ll call him Samuel.”
And so, my father being Maxwell James Hill, I became Samuel James Hill.
Sam Hill. Or, as I would soon become known, Sam Hell.
4
My mother wasted no time doting on me and recording every detail of my life, as evidenced by the dozens of scrapbooks and photo albums she filled and kept on the mahogany bookshelves in our living room. When it came to my life, my mother acted as if she were preserving the legacy of a future president for his presidential library. Even before cameras digitally recorded the date on individual photographs, she would write the day, month, and year on the white borders to note such momentous occasions as my first bath, my first meal in a high chair, and the obligatory first potty-training session. I also possess the hospital beanie and ankle bracelet I wore home from the hospital, as well as every report card I earned and every high school newspaper article I wrote. Whether my mother’s diligence was intended to document the extraordinary life she was convinced I was destined to lead or simply the result of her having too much time on her hands, I cannot say, but this meticulous recording of my life, along with the extended hours I would later spend with my father under the shade of that retirement center oak tree, allowed me to piece together much of these first years of my life.
My mother, of course, deemed my red eyes to be “God’s will.” And so, when some hospital administration types advised that hospital policy dictated I be examined by a specialist before I could be discharged, she turned them down cold. She suspected the hospital was more concerned with their potential legal liability than my health. “I’ll sign a waiver,” she’d said. “And we’ll be out of your hair.”
My mother’s suspicion was only partially accurate. It seems word of the child with red eyes traveled quickly through the hospital corridors and surrounding medical community, and there was no shortage of doctors eager to examine me. My mother brushed them aside as “charlatans.” “They were only interested in being published in the New England Journal of Medicine,” she’d told me.
My father, not a man to rock the boat, had suggested a compromise. “Perhaps we can allow one doctor to examine Samuel, just to be certain.”
My mother reluctantly consented, and both sides agreed upon Dr. Charles Pridemore, an ophthalmologist at the Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto.
I don’t know to what extent Dr. Pridemore educated my parents that day or on subsequent visits, but I soon became well versed in my “condition,” the only word my mother would ever use to describe my eyes. A soft-spoken, bearded man of quiet dignity, Dr. Pridemore would become a lifelong mentor and friend. What I recall about him from my youth, however, was that he always had the appearance and demeanor of a slightly distracted science professor—plaid shirts and wrinkled corduroys, an unkempt beard, wisps of curly hair protruding at odd angles, and glasses mottled with dust and fingerprints.
“Ocular albinism,” he’d later explained to me on one of my frequent visits, “is best understood with a rudimentary explanation of the components of the eye.” He used a diagram hanging on the wall to show me the two layers of pigment in the iris. “There is the front, which we see, and the back, which we don’t see, but which blocks light transmission. The iris without pigment is white,” he explained, chewing hard on his ever-present stick of spearmint gum. “And the presence or absence of melanin in the iris accounts for the color of our eyes. A lot of melanin at the front results in brown eyes. No melanin in front, blue eyes. Some melanin and the eyes can appear green, hazel, and every shade in between, depending on the amount and distribution.”
“And what about red?” I had asked.
“Technically, there is no such thing as red pigment.”
“But my eyes are red,” I said. And they were, though let me clarify. I am not talking about fire-engine, glow-in-the-dark red, or even the red of a ripe apple. The color was more subtle, bordering on pink. But I’m also not an albino. Though I was born a towhead, my hair gradually darkened to its current nondescript light brown. And though I burn if I don’t use sunblock, my skin pigmentation is otherwise normal. And that is how my mother considered me from the moment of my birth. Normal. In the hospital room, when Dr. Pridemore came to conduct his examination, she asked the only question that mattered to her. “Will it affect his vision?”