The Color of Remembering

Eyes are indeed an incredible thing. They are but silent storytellers—keepers of wonder, sorrow, and joy. For some, like Bilbo Baggins, it took a change in the eyes to become an adventurer, to finally leave his cozy but lonely Bag End and step out for the journey of a lifetime.

At 64, Elsa doesn’t remember much about that anymore. It felt like eons since she had read anything that wasn’t a cookbook. Become a cook— that was never the plan! But then again, when did her life ever follow the intended path? She didn’t want to go down one of her thought spirals, or the rabbit hole of ‘what ifs’. She wasn’t one of those roly-poly dolls that would get back up unscathed, should it fall. Even the years of hardships, living among people who were more than happy to condemn her, and days that felt like she was just surviving them—would not be able to shield her from the agony that would follow the wretched thing called ‘regret’.

She almost absentmindedly skimmed through the pages of her bio-history seen through the eyes of the old Kodak camera, telling a story from long ago. A time when her eyes shined. With wonder, hope and dreams. Now, she has started to dream in grey colors, the same shade as her hair. If she had fought harder or run away from home, would that 8-year-old clumsy dancer be alive? She felt like a sinner entrapped in her own prismatic cage. The shine that had left her eyes was now the illuminating barrier protecting the memories.

Memories are a funny thing too. When one tries hard to remember, they somehow recede into the distance. In moments of quiet, they resurface like ocean tides, bringing with them forgotten sounds, old music, regrets, unsaid words with the same randomness of Pandora’s box. But at her age, what else could she hold on to?

Mei—her mother, whom she used to call that, had told her that there are stories of girls who didn’t wonder about what they want to be when they grow up. Rather, they asked themselves what they wanted to be ‘if’ they grew up. Mei was just trying to protect her kid. The kid she didn’t fight for. The one who was left behind. But even though she didn’t agree with it, she understood. She had seen Mei wipe her tears while checking the rice jars. She had seen Mei counting pennies and giving her all the green peas when she herself ate rice with nothing but plain, bland soup. She had seen Mei’s prismatic prison that was well hidden behind her eyes that seemed to be screaming in agony and fear of going silent one day. She had also seen Mei’s eyes not being just silent, but dull—an achingly dull color of the abyss, a color that was in contrast with the memorial photo that was taken of a different Mei with cherry pink blush and smiling eyes. And Elsa’s eyes couldn’t look at those eyes so she looked up at the glum sky with a film of tears on her own. “Now, who would give me 20 things when they only had 10, Mei?” She whispered to the clouds. The people who took in poor orphaned Elsa, were much more interested in the tea shop that her late mother had left behind.

Mei had once been quick on her feet—balancing trays at the tea shop, haggling at the vegetable market, darting between rooms while humming lullabies that made Elsa believe their world, though small, was magical enough. But then came the weight in her bones. It started with tiredness. Not the kind sleep could fix, but a gnawing, dragging exhaustion that turned her arms into iron and her spine into glass. Doctors in the local clinic called it systemic lupus erythematosus, an autoimmune disease that her body wore like a quiet war.

On good days, Mei would braid Elsa’s hair and still chuckle over spilled tea leaves. On bad ones, she’d stare blankly at the worn wooden floor, her knees swollen, her skin blotched and hot with inflammation. And then she would say to her daughter that she wanted Elsa to survive and grow up. That it didn’t matter that she didn’t have a father or that she didn’t have a mother who could afford the fees of a dance academy. The pain sometimes made her forget the day or Elsa’s age or why the water kettle had boiled dry. Pills became a staple on the kitchen shelf. But the illness didn’t just take from Mei’s body—it chipped away at her presence. Her laughter came less. Her voice cracked more. The customers whispered. The regulars stopped coming. And one day, the shop’s doors didn’t open at all.

What hurt most was how she tried to hide it. Elsa noticed everything but she couldn’t cry. Not when her mother was alive, not when her memories—bitter or happy—struck her. And so, Elsa stopped looking. Not just at the photos, but at herself and the things she liked. She didn’t wish to see the reflection of the scars carried by her eyes. She didn’t keep mirrors in her room either. Not in the way fairy tales warn of witches or shattered glass, but in the quiet, creeping way that truth seems frightening when eyes are not ready to see it. Her coping mechanism was the will to survive. That was the only thing her mother had asked of her. ‘Dancing’ was locked away—folded into the same dusty corner where she had packed away mirrors and laughter.

She carefully skimmed through a few more pages of the photo-album. The monochrome didn’t cast a dull tone on it. “Gran, a penny for your thoughts?” 10-year-old Samantha was hopping around and asking her. Elsa looked at her. So much of her features resembled that eight-year-old kid from the photographs. And Samantha, too was dressed up in her own exquisite ballet dress. She sighed, and couldn’t resist asking her grandchild.

“Say, Sammy, do my eyes look silent?” The poor kid couldn’t fathom the gravity of the question. Just as Elsa had expected her to. Samantha got busy looking through her Gran’s black-and-white days of past with phantasmagoric portraits to frame and vibrant eyes that held so much passion. “They’re not silent. Just look a li’l bit different.” “Different?” Elsa echoed, puzzled. Suddenly ‘Some people like to rock, some people like to roll…’ started playing loudly. Elvis Presley’s voice rang out, cheerful and bold.

“See!” Sammy beamed, twirling around. “Now it’s better. Now your eyes are happy! Let’s dance, Gran!”

And, suddenly, Elsa could see the girl who she had left behind and believed to be dead and buried. She was dancing again—gleefully, freely—while Mei stood off to the side, nervously reminding her to be careful. She turned and looked Elsa in the eyes. And the prismatic cage began to melt away. She wasn’t a sinner anymore. She hadn’t realized the simple way her grandkid had put it—just a li’l bit different. Her eyes weren’t silent. She had just stopped looking at them. Elsa held Sammy’s little hands and laughed and danced. Maybe, it was about time she left her lonely Bag End. As her eyes were just different. They didn’t shine with the same dazzling spark but they still smiled at her grandkid, at Elvis Presley’s music. They smiled at the rediscovered joy. They weren’t the shade of dull and dead abyss yet. How intriguing, she thought the thing called eyes were. They would witness the unbearable burden on the tired backs carrying heavy coffins and—yet fear death. Eyes, the windows to one’s soul, even in grey colors, don’t wish to leave out dreams.

For now, she just danced with Sammy, and waved back at the girl she had left behind and thought to be lost in agony and bitterness. Maybe, tomorrow she will be able to hold a mirror and take a look—at those eyes. And maybe, she wondered—and how glad was she to wonder about it—she will find them speaking.

“Bring me a mirror tomorrow, will you, Sammy?” She said as Samantha was keeping the photo-album back on the shelf. Perhaps they were simply waiting for her to notice again. To find those forgotten outlines—not without ghosts, no—but perhaps not as empty as she had feared.

Not resentful.
Just waiting.
Just different.

And for the first time in years, she didn’t dread the mirror.
She hoped for it.

And she hoped so because she had remembered—the vibrant dreams that once appeared in colors.