But Dr. Pridemore did not know that answer in 1957, there being scant literature on the topic. “All I can say is that Samuel’s eyes are very rare.”
“Not rare, Doctor,” my mother corrected. “Extraordinary.”
5
My father dutifully called the few relatives I had with the news of my birth. My father had been an only child, born and raised in Chicago. He had lost his father to cancer two years before I was born. His German mother, whom I referred to as Oma Hill, made an annual sojourn to Burlingame for the Christmas holidays. Either my birth did not rate a separate visit, or my father politely steered her away from coming. I presume my father thought it best to spare everyone Oma Hill’s lamentations about all the pitfalls that awaited a child born with red eyes.
Grandma O’Malley, on the other hand, rode the first bus from San Francisco to Burlingame, suitcase in hand. Also a widow, Grandma O’Malley had never possessed a driver’s license and saw little need of obtaining one. She raised my mother and my auntie Bonnie in a San Francisco Victorian in the Mission District, where bus lines were plentiful, specialty shops abundant, and she could walk to Saint James Catholic Church for morning Mass. Unlike Oma Hill, Grandma O’Malley did not acknowledge afflictions, neuroses, diseases, or maladies, a trait I have since attributed to her Irish heritage. She apparently marched into my parents’ bedroom, unswaddled me from my cocoon in the bassinet, and proclaimed, “Two eyes, two ears, ten fingers, ten toes, and a nose. Perfect.”
And that was her final word on the subject.
6
Sunday, three days after we arrived home from the hospital, my mother dressed me for my first visit to Our Lady of Mercy. It would take something far more severe than giving birth to keep my mother from attending Sunday Mass. My parents arrived early and marched down the long aisle to the third pew on the left, what would become our unwavering spot. My mother later would say this was so that God could note our presence, though a skeptic might believe it was to ensure a less divine being would take notice—our pastor, Father Brogan. Parishioners’ regular attendance at Mass, and their offerings in the weekly envelopes, went a long way when it came time to enroll their children in OLM’s crowded Catholic grammar school.
Before slipping into the pew that first Sunday, my mother took me to the alcove just to the right of the altar to present me to the Blessed Mother of Jesus Christ. Mary stood atop a globe, dressed in a blue-and-white shawl, rosary beads in hand and a snake crushed beneath her bare feet. It was the first of what would be many visits I would make to that alcove.
That my parents’ first encounter with intolerance would occur in church is less a commentary on Catholic hypocrisy than it is a testament to the frequency of their attendance. They were regular Sunday churchgoers, not “Christmas Catholics,” as my father dubbed those who attended Mass only on Christmas and Easter. Had my parents been as fervent about baseball, I’m sure the first inappropriate comment about the color of my eyes would have come from a child wearing a baseball cap and eating a hot dog. As it was, the offender was a young boy in blue knickers sitting in the pew behind us.
“Mom,” he’d apparently exclaimed, “what’s wrong with that baby’s eyes?”
“What did you do?” I would ask when my mother recounted this story.
“Why, I turned around and gave him a closer look,” she’d say. “Then I told him, ‘There’s nothing wrong with his eyes. God made them that color. They’re extraordinary.’”
Following Mass, my mother also did not hesitate to present me to Father Brogan. A petite man with a white beard and thick Irish brogue, Father Brogan hid his shock—it was not possible that he did not notice. According to my father, the priest scooped me into his arms, lifted me overhead, and pronounced me to be “a fine lad indeed.”
7
In my thirteenth month, I took my first step, or so I was told. I found no snapshot to document this momentous occasion in the photo album labeled 1958. I do know that I took this step at home during a weekday, prompting my mother to stage a reenactment when my father arrived home from work so he could capture it on camera. Some months after my mother died, I found a cardboard box containing canisters of film in her attic. In the grainy, silent film documenting that day, I’m standing in a diaper with wobbly legs and clutching the corner of our living room coffee table. My mother is also in the film, clapping her hands and silently coaxing me to let go, without success. It seems that I had become distracted by my mother’s rosary, alternately slapping the beads on the table or shoving them in my mouth and drooling. My mother, sensing an opportunity, took the rosary from me and dangled the silver cross just out of my reach.