Brown eyes are so common. I always wished that my father's genes had been a little stronger. Of course, my science teachers would probably point to genetics, Punnett squares, and whatever else I likely slept through. My eyes were inherited from my mother and her grandmother before her. Hazel... just a different shade of brown in my mind. I try to cherish them. This story, however, is about when I truly saw into my father's eyes for the first time.

My father, Tim, grew up with a mother who loved and adored her three sons, and as the eldest, he took on the responsibility of being the example. His father, Henry, was a ghost that haunted the family. Never present. Always disappearing when needed most, and never kind. Always a specter who would appear and just as quickly fade away as if he never existed.

Through traumas and trials, my dad was determined to be a man who would one day make his own father proud and be better than him in every way. He sought love from a man who chose life on the road over a family and responsibility. He built a life that many would envy. He had his own son—the son he had always wanted. The son who never went a day with an empty stomach. A son who never knew the sting of a belt. The son who knew what it was like to be loved unconditionally.

It was when this son was in middle school that his father received a call. Henry was sick; he had a couple of months at most. Like any devoted son, Tim was by his father's side several times throughout these months. In his mind, he always brought his most important treasure along on these hospital journeys. The son, however, only saw a stranger lying in a bed, telling stories and promising an inheritance of a coin collection—a stranger whom the boy had always wanted to connect with.

My mother lost her dad when she was seventeen years old, leaving her and her five siblings with an amazing woman who was my grandmother. The stories of these two men were drastically different.

However, the son knew why he was along for these journeys to Ohio to visit the wanderer who finally seemed to be in one place. His great-grandfather, a carpenter and a man of morals and belly laughs, had passed when he was only six years old. Before him now, in the costume of a man too thin, with chemo medications holding back the disease that had taken so many members of his family, was the only grandfather he had left—but had never known.

Henry talked about how he had found faith. How he had asked for forgiveness for what he had done in the past and was forgiven. I could see it in his light, piercing blue eyes. He believed that. His hair, so thin that it looked like the fluff of a feather escaped from a pillow, had a very familiar cockatoo look. Coins and avian bedhead... an interesting inheritance, to say the least.

On one of the drives home, Dad mused out loud to me. I realized then that I was the one who had a role. I was his support, I was his rock, and I was the one person who may have been able to truly see what he had been searching for. "You know, son," he said, "all I've ever wanted my dad to do was to say he was sorry. Sorry for everything in the past. Sorry for the way he treated me, my mom, and my brothers. I would feel like I had closure. Uncle Steve told me that he had asked for God's forgiveness, and that's all I've ever wanted to hear from him."

We had one more visit to that hospital. Henry was thinner, and it was clear that he was no longer comfortable no matter what was tried. I remembered my dad's wishes from our previous trip. I never talked much. I was more of an observer; I answered questions when asked, but I never really knew what to say.

This is when I saw into my father's eyes for the first time.

I remembered our conversation from the last trip. I remembered the pain I heard, the longing for something that was well overdue. My eyes were open this trip. I watched my father speak to the man who had left his heart aching. I moved around the room, past the beeping machines and the TV that hadn't been switched off in months. I peered at my grandfather from behind my dad's shoulders. And then I saw them.

My father's eyes: piercing, light blue, found only in the clearest of skies. Eyes that made you feel as though your soul was on display and could read your innermost thoughts. Except I was looking at Henry. He was weak but still answering my father's questions, though he did not have the energy to continue for long. He grew tired, and it was time for us to retreat back to Owensboro once again.

This trip had been different. Dad was quiet, and I watched him from the passenger seat—a silent observer who wanted so badly to heal what had been broken.
Henry passed within a week of that trip. My dad would often sit and talk with me about life before, but after the funeral, when time had passed, and we sat together one night, the conversation from the car that day so long ago came flooding back. "Sam, all I ever wanted was for my dad to say he was sorry. To give me closure. And now I will never have the chance for that."

For those of you who only know me from college, teaching, or coaching, this may be a shock. I was very quiet in those middle school years. I tended to watch and keep to myself around most people.

I said something that night that I hope will stay in my father's heart for the rest of his life, because it came from truly seeing my father's eyes: the pain of rejection, the longing, and the love that was still somehow there for a man who had caused him so much strife.

"You know, Dad, I am sorry that you never got what you wanted. I know that it meant a lot to you. But you know, you were nothing like him to me. I have never had to wonder what it's like to feel loved by my dad."

To this day, my father, Tim Roberts, is still one of the most honorable, kindest, and morally upstanding men I have ever met. He is the standard for what a man should be. He loves his family deeply, works hard even into his seventies, and shows so much love to his children and grandchildren. I am truly blessed because I could finally see through my father's eyes.