Not in the racially driven, “We see no color” statement; I mean like, literally, colorblind.

It’s often inherited, so they never really stood a chance when it came to the ability to distinguish between greens and reds. PJ is colorblind, my maternal grandfather was, and so is my cousin on my mother’s side.

My mom often tells the story of my grandfather coming over to fix her dishwasher. As he was lying on the floor pulling at wires, he yelled in his gruff, Italian, inside voice, “Give me the yellow wire!” and when she didn’t know what he was talking about because there was no yellow wire, he kept yelling, “The yellow one! The yellow one!”

It turned out the “yellow” wire was actually red, and that’s pretty damn scary when I think of all the electrical jobs he worked on for us 😳😬

A few years ago I brought my kids to their annual eye doctor exam, and when I mentioned that colorblindness runs in the family, the assistant administered the test on all three of them. It’s a simple flip chart containing tiny green circles that form one large circle, and within the tiny green circles, there are some red ones that form a number. If you can see the number, you’re not colorblind.

I stood over each of their shoulders’ and was able to see all ten numbers. Out of the three, only my youngest was able to see one. They were all diagnosed as “severely colorblind”. I thought they’d be upset but they’re not. My youngest actually wears it like a badge of honor because he likes that it makes him different. My mom is happy because it will most likely keep them out of the military.

I always thought it was cool that PJ is colorblind. I also think it’s cute that he has to rely on me sometimes because of it. Just yesterday he asked if the color on a battery charger was red or green because he couldn’t tell.

He always said it didn’t bother him, so when Enchroma came out with color-correcting sunglasses, I wasn’t sure if I should get them for him. I debated whether they’d make him happy, or possibly make him sad when realizing what he’d been missing out on all these years. I decided that seeing the true colors of his children’s eyes outweighed any sadness.

So I pulled out my credit card (they’re not cheap) and ordered them. There were a few different styles to choose from. I went with the aviators because, well, who doesn’t want to look like Maverick in Top Gun? 😎

I surprised him with them one morning before school. I wanted him to come with me to drop off the kids so I could be there when he saw the all gorgeous Fall leaves the way they were meant to be seen.

Enchroma includes bright balloons in the package so you can do a big “reveal” and all the colors of the rainbow are right there for them. Forgetting that my husband only gets visibly excited when the Giants/Mets win the Super Bowl/World Series, I was wrong in thinking he’d get emotional like all the people in the videos I’d seen online.

I was shoving the balloons in his face like, “LOOK! WHAT COLOR IS THIS? LOOK! IT’S PURPLE! IT’S BLUE!!” (What can I say? I know I’m annoying 🤷🏻‍♀️), and he kind of just walked around our driveway staring intently at the ground. I’ll admit I was disappointed because I wanted him to cry like the people in the videos (that sounds really sick, right? 😂) I thought his lack of emotion meant he wasn’t really impressed.

As we waited in the drop off line and I sat there wondering if I’d just wasted a bunch of money, I asked what he was thinking. It turns out the reason he was staring at the ground and not at the amazing trees or anything else around us, was because he’d never noticed all the different colors in GRASS. Where most people take the different variations of greens and yellows in a soccer field for granted, he was in shock that it wasn’t all one flat color as he’d thought.

His quiet awe was so much more meaningful and sweet than what I’d expected from him. It had already been more than an hour since I’d given him the glasses, and it took until then for him to verbalize how he felt because he was so amazed. In that moment I knew I’d made the right decision.

It was still a little bit of a bummer that he didn’t cry though 🙁😂