Blond Hair, Blue Eyes, Fair Skin

In the last several days, in two different conversations, two different people asked, shocked, "You used to be blond?" Their disbelief was so strong that even I was surprised by my answer.

Inside my head, I am still blond.

Outside my head, I'm not (though what color of my hair is I couldn't tell you).

I do know this: genes are funny things. They connect us directly to our parents and theirs and to our siblings even more so and through them to their children and through us to our own, on and on and on.

One of the things I come by (I cannot use the past tense) naturally, along with my blond hair, is my fair skin. Once, in 9th grade gym class, Mrs. Rivers, my teacher, blew her whistle after no more than ten minutes of basketball and called, "Oh my gosh! Are you all right, Robley?" It wasn't the first time in my life that someone worried I was about to pass out. I explained, again, that I was just fine.

Today, my red face means I have exercised or become overheated by coming into a warm temperature after having been in a cool one. Today, I know why: I have chronic skin condition that used to give my Irish ancestors the bad reputation of drunkeness -- I have rosacea. I'm used to it now, and I'm used to the discomfort (imagine a bad sunburn) that usually wanes within an hour.

But every now and then, as just now after mowing the lawn on a cool, overcast day, I catch my reflection in the mirror and am surprised: in my red checks and nose I see my niece's and my nephew's and my father's faces all smiling back at me.
Then, the redness doesn't sting quite so much.