Behind Blue Eyes

My son could be a poster child for Hitler Youth. Really. His thick, blond hair, highlighted with the slightest hint of auburn, his lean taut frame, his perfect porcelain skin, all would have turned that nutjob Adolph into a fawning simp. However, the clinchers, the details that would have awakened that fascist bastard in the middle of the night with nocturnal emission fantasies of a Tuetonic triumph are my boy's blue eyes. They are the sea. They are the New Mexico sky. They are the purest Moorish tiles. They are in a word, impressive, though they are no longer the deep steel blue that dropped our jaws when he was born. No, they have lightened somewhat, as if nature, sensing that those infant eyes would be overwhelming in anyone older, tempered them, giving them the ability to hold you in their gaze without intimidating you into subservience.

His younger sister has them as well. They are as magical, though sadly my experience with the boy had prepared me, so that when I saw hers for the first time they were less a miracle and more the natural order of things. She may well end up with a deeper shade than her sibling but I suspect the difference will be miniscule.

I was fated to view the world through the more commonplace hazel; that dullish brown that in the right light can sparkle with green. My wife however, was gifted with smoky blue eyes that, no doubt, passed to our children.

Almost all caucasian babies are born with blue eyes; baby blues. A lack of melanin at birth is responsible; melanin that will later protect their skin from UV, darken their hair and ultimately, change their eye color. Eyes that stay blue are the result of a genetic mutation. Within the last ten thousand years, perhaps even more recently, a few genes were whirled, mixed, combined... got tangled up and... well, some long ago newborn's baby blues, stayed blue.

A study that showed up this week suggests the mutation occurred somewhere in the Baltic, most likely in what is now Estonia. How they can determine that is beyond me, but I'll take their word for it. The rarity of blue eyes is explained by the recessive nature of those tangled genes. Both mother and father must carry them and then they must both contribute that twisted DNA at conception, meaning that even if mom and dad got the goods, the odds are still only one in four that they'll produce a child with eyes of sky.

Another interesting aspect of that recent study is that all those blue-eyed wonders are cousins. Because the genes must couple with one another to produce the effect, because the DNA is traceable to one mutation, Frank Sinatra and Brad Pitt, John Kennedy and Elvis Presley, Vanessa Williams and Howard Stern, are all, however distantly, related to one another and to my children as well.

I am descended, on my father's side from Vikings, Norse terrors who pillaged and raped their way through Europe a millennia ago. However, if my traits are any reflection of theirs, my direct ancestors probably whined about the cold and feigned cramps before battles.

My father's parents both emigrated from Norway in the early part of the twentieth century. My grandmother frequently travelled back to Oslo in her later years, visiting the descendants of relatives who, too fearful or successful in the old world, never ventured to the new. Though I'm sure she enjoyed the reunions, I suspect her returns had as much to do with a genetic sense memory, and the primal safety that engenders, as the familial ties.

When I wandered Europe nearly two decades ago I made a visit to the land of my ancestors. I was not consciously prepared, I think, for its beauty. Constantly in awe, I wondered how those Norwegians could walk out their front doors in the morning, see that rough, majestic, oh so tempting landscape, and still manage to trudge off to a job. There was however, deep within me, an acute sense of familiarity; a feeling that I was not a stranger in this place. That feeling was substantially reinforced with every personal encounter. It was, if not quite a family reunion, so much like one that I was taken aback. Almost everyone, everywhere, looked like me or my father or one of my cousins. It was strange, magical, and unexpectedly appealing. It also felt very, very safe; the ancient tribe welcoming me, recognizing in my features the signs of blood unity. The prodigal Viking returned. Primal, old-brain, genetic sense memory is exactly what it was.

It was that same genetic sense memory that made Hitler's dreams so desirable to so many. It was the engine of Nazi evil. It stoked the horror of Rwanda. It fuels the fires in the Middle East. It drove the ancestors of those warm and welcoming Norwegians to terrorize and spread their seed throughout Europe. You can see it working every day in any airport security line in this melting pot of ours. It is truly an odd thing, this fear of the other, the different; responsible for so much misery and death throughout human history and yet so compelling and comforting when genetic familiars gather together. It's also what may, one day, be the end of us all.

I have always craved the heterogeneous. Difference delights me. I had never imagined myself as being subject to the primal desire for sameness. When I felt that sense of safety and genetic bon ami in Norway I was disturbed by its deep appeal. I was bothered by the idea that in the right circumstance, under the right conditions, this compelling emotion might allow me to be manipulated into attacking the other. It remains a frightening and uncomfortable aspect of my soul.

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The blue-eyed study is strange. The fact that it can connect all those that see through the azure; that it can drop them all into one family tree distinct from the rest of us is fascinating but bizarre. An older study had already done something similar writ large. Using mitochondrial DNA it traced us all, every last one of us, regardless of eye color or any other feature save simply being human, back to a single woman; a genetic Eve, who lived some 140,000 years ago in what is now eastern Africa. We are all related; all cousins. There really isn't an other, not really. That idea isn't fresh. It's been around much longer than the science used to prove it, but still...

My wife and I have discussed taking our children to Norway in a few years. I like the idea of having them acquire a sense of their history. I want them to see fjords and seascapes, bright summer sun and silvery birches. I want them to understand that there is wellspring for their past and to enjoy the opportunity of meeting distant relatives. I want to see their blue eyes glisten with the soft flicker of the familiar. But most of all, I want those eyes to see that, as safe and comforting as it is to visit, it's not a place we should stay.