Mommy moments: The milkman

My daughter was born after 36 hours of labor. She came out with fair hair and baby blue eyes. Her father had deep auburn hair and chocolate-brown eyes; of Greek descent, Mommy had dark brown hair and hazel eyes. My daughter inherited her blue eyes from my father; my sister also has blue eyes, and so does my sister-in-law.

Still, whenever people commented about my daughter’s beautiful blue eyes and blond hair, people would say, “She must have gotten that hair and blue eyes from the milkman. She surely didn’t get it from her mommy and daddy.” We would laugh and agree. This went on for two years.

When our daughter began to talk, she really jumped right in. She would repeat words that she would hear on a daily basis. If someone used slang for anything, she would use it. She also watched Sesame Street and learned a lot of Spanish. I knew she was smart and precocious.

Her father died when she was only 30 days old, so she never really knew her him. There were pictures of him, and she knew at age three that he lived in heaven. I was teaching in a small town in Mississippi. I was somewhat of an oddity: widowed with a small child. This was right before the conflict in Viet Nam. My students learned early on that my daughter was my pride and joy and that she was quite a show-off.

One afternoon, I picked up my daughter from the sitter’s and brought her back to the high school. My last class was study hall; thirty students filed in, surprised to see my daughter in tow. After I called the roll, I asked the students if they had any questions for her.

She was not a shy child. They started asking her questions about me, her father, and her dog. She told them I snored at night, her father lived in heaven, and her dog was born before she was. One student asked her, “Where did you get those beautiful blue eyes?”

You guessed it. She said, “From the milkman.” I was so embarrassed! The kids laughed and laughed and never let me live that one down. I taught there for four years, and the story might still be floating around after 38 years. Teens really got a kick out of that. I had to explain the whole story to them, but they would have nothing to do with it. The moral to the story is: never play around with matches; you might get burned.