Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue

Response to prompt #2: A Musical Stamp

Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue
by Annmarie Ferry

The song starts playing in my head, and suddenly I'm an 8-year-old doe-eyed, curly haired girl again.

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It was my favorite ritual. My grandpa would take me to A&W, and we'd sit in a booth, one with our own little personal jukebox.

"Here you go, kiddo," he says as he nonchalantly flips a quarter in my direction. "You pick the first song."

I flip through the selections. Debbie Boone's You Light Up My Life is one I usually pick, but I flip past it. Linda Ronstadt's You're No Good is another favorite, but it's not what I want today.

When I see the title, I know it's the one. I place my quarter in the machine and carefully punch in the code.

Don't know when I've been so blue
Don't know what's come over you
You've found someone new and
Don't it make my brown eyes blue...

Crystal Gayle's silky, deep, soulful voice belted out lyrics to a song I was no where near being able to understand. In my naivety, I took the chorus literally, giving me hope that my own set of boring brown peepers may one day morph into beautiful blue eyes, the blue of my favorite marble at home.

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I sat on the chaise lounge in our bedroom, stroking the sage green microfiber, raking marks in the fabric, then erasing them with a swipe of my hand.  Tears welled up in my chocolate brown eyes, eyes I had finally learned to love, mostly because my blue-eyed husband loved them and partly because I realized they weren't going to magically turn blue. 

My husband of 25 years nonchalantly tosses his clothes into moving bins, avoiding eye contact at all costs. He never could stand it when I even got teary-eyed, much less when I broke into all-out sobs.

I could leave him to himself to complete this dirty deed, but something in me feels compelled to sit right where I am--not willing to beg him to stay, but not able to let him go.  

"I don't understand," I whispered. "What did I do to deserve this?"

"For fuck's sake," he snapped. "I told you. You didn't do anything. "You never do anything. I'm just over this part of my life and need to move on."

"Did the blue-eyed blonde girl at work make it easier for you to make your move?" I bore through him with my glare, wishing I could actually shoot daggers from my eyes. 

It was only a faint suspicion, one I had convinced myself that was concocted out of paranoia, but my instincts were confirmed when he froze in the middle of folding up one of his yellow-pit stained undershirts.  

"Why do you have to go there?" he retorted. "She has nothing to do with it. I just don't love you anymore." 

I didn't ask the next question aloud because I knew he didn't hold the answer. Yet, I couldn't help but wrack my own brain. How is it possible for a couple to be partners in life for a quarter of a century to just fall out of love as easily and quickly as they fell in love? After all they've been through--miscarriages, children's births, illnesses, losing parents, a daughter's wedding--how in the hell can one of them just wake up one day and decide he's not in love anymore?

Crystal belted out the second verse in my head:

I'll be fine when you're gone

I'll just cry all night long

Say it isn't true and

Don't it make my brown eyes blue...

In this moment, I get it. I get the sadness and desperation behind this song, the longing for everything to stay the same, the nagging feeling of regret for not paying enough attention to sense our relationship was faltering. 

All I want now is to go back. 

   

https://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/601657_orig.jpg

lyrics courtesy of Metro Lyrics: http://www.metrolyrics.com/dont-it-make-my-brown-eyes-blue-lyrics-crystal-gayle.html