The Power of Gray Eyes and the Importance of Patient Advocacy

Rating: This is an “Adults Only” story.
On the writing process: I have written this story in first person and as a poem – my revisiting of the topic in different voices and genres tells me that it is a story aching to be told. I needed the distance that third person gives to be able work with its message. When I write personal narrative or memoir, I am relying on my memory. One of the essential practices of the AWA method is that “writing is treated as fiction”. This allows my memories to flow freely. This story happened. It’s retelling is as accurate as my memory can be.

Usually, the young man’s eyes were blue and soft – especially with her. And in their gentleness, the girl’s dad saw an honesty and kindness that he wanted for his only daughter. Even more than that, her school-principal dad admired the brilliance that shone in those eyes and on report cards. Her dad recognized real potential in that blue-eyed, slim, ambitious boy.

Then, just months after their wedding, the young man’s eyes turned gray and fierce as he reacted to her pleas for a baby – “I WILL NOT be a teenaged dad!”

They decided that March would be the month. He would be twenty. No more condoms or foam.