When my brother was four and I was seven years old, a glass bottle of sparkling water exploded in my hands while walking. As a kid, I was probably shaking it and the gas pressure made the bottle explode in hundreds of little pieces.
When it happened, my first reaction was to look at my little brother's face. I knew nothing had happened to me, except for a little cut on my finger. For my bro, luck was different. Dozens of pieces of glass flew right straight to his eye, cutting nerves, and basically destroying his beautiful brown long lashed left eye.
It was a day before christmas eve, in 86. He spent christmas eve having an 8 hour surgery and we all four spend christmas receiving terrible news. He had lost complete vision and color of his eye. He would never be able to see us with his left eye, we would never be able to see the beautiful brown almond eye again as it once was.
I was devastated. I felt so guilty, and as a kid, I knew it was my unintentional fault. It was a long summer of sadness, more surgeries, and my brother not able to go outside and play with the rest of the kids, so I stayed with him, all summer, by his side in his bed, talking and playing so he wouldn't be bored.
Months later, things got a little better. He wasn't at risk of infection and he could at least walk and hang with us, but I guess in all my little depression, I had never seen how his eye looked now.
He was usually wearing a patch, so dust or other things couldn't go in his eye and cause infection, but one day, while having breakfast, the patch was gone and the new eye that was here to stay forever was right there for me to see.
It was smaller than before. It had cuts and stitches on the outside, eyebrow and eyelid and it also had stitches on the inside. It was bizarre. His eye looked now like fish eye. It was all dark black and had no expression.
Years later I came to terms with the fact that it was an accident. He took the whole experience as a champ and I love him so much for not ever making me feel guilty about it, not even once, not even when he was mad at its worst, or when we were fighting as animals. Not even when he was bullied or called terminator or pirate or all the cruel things that come out from kids mouths. He would ask us not to care because he didn't.
When I meet a person, maybe because of this experience, I look right to his or her eyes. I don't care about the rest and I am fascinated by how much you can tell just by looking to these little crystal balls.
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