My eyes are green. To be precise, they are green-brown. Or are they brown-green? Does word order matter?! Oh, it mattered a lot to the agent at the German Consulate who reviewed the form I had filled out to request a new passport. “Last time you said they were brown-green. Now you’re saying they are green-brown. What are they really?!” I got my last passport 10 years ago, and a lot has happened since then. While the color of my eyes probably stayed the same, my view of the world was challenged by one blow of fate after the other. When I filled out the form this year, I didn’t even think of checking my old passport. The agent at the consulate demanded continuity where there was almost none left. My life had changed so much, and somehow green had moved up in my inner word order.
I won’t claim that my eyes look greener this year, it’s just that my attention is more on the green shade of their color. Maybe l can relate more to green because it reminds me of my garden and the new spring green. Who knows? The agent at the consulate certainly didn’t care about all this. She wanted something I couldn’t give her myself but I tried to offer her two ways out: “Please, feel free to check the color for yourself”, I said to her in German, and then I added “In the US, they usually call it hazel.” Oh, the relief when she heard this: “Hazel, that means brown-green!” She found her answer, and I got my new passport.
California Journal 