Seeing

“You have your father’s eyes.”  Strangers said this as if they were the first to see it. They looked from me to him, then back to me. “Big brown eyes. Just like your Daddy’s.” He shrugged and put his hand on my shoulder. I smiled and kept my eyes open wide on the stranger. It felt like the polite thing to do. 

Everywhere people saw my eyes. Grocery clerks, bus drivers, teachers, librarians. “Look at those big brown eyes.” I told them they were my father’s. They laughed like it was a joke and not a fact. 

The school nurse who tested our vision paused when it was my turn. “Oh my, I hope you won’t have to hide those big brown eyes behind glasses.” I didn’t. My eyes tested at 20/10. Better than perfect. The only thing about me that was. That held until my mid-thirties when it slipped to 20/15. 

A decade later I thought I was going blind. Driving home from my annual trip to the Ojibwe Reservation, I thought there was a dirt spot on the windshield. But the spot kept moving. And oddly. No discernable pattern. I pulled over to see if there was an insect that decided my car was his home. Things like that happen on the Rez, and if that was the case, I should know who this was. But there was nothing there. I looked up to the sky and the spot reappeared. As I blinked, it moved. It was inside my eyeball. For the next twenty-four hours I prepared for inevitable blindness. I looked through photo albums my mother had made for me, and the pictures crammed in boxes waiting for a time I would do that for my children. That may never happen now. I remembered being eight years old and wishing I was blind so I could have a seeing eye dog. When my mother was outside hanging laundry, I put on a blind fold and tried to walk through the house. I knocked over a lamp, fell down the stairs, and got a spanking when I wouldn’t tell her why I did it.  I prayed to become blind that night, so she’d feel bad.  I woke up to the sun streaming into my room and assumed the answer was no. Maybe I should have canceled the request. 

The intake nurse did not appear alarmed when I described what had happened. She wrote it in the chart, gave me the eye test and smiled. “Perfect! 20/20.”  I didn’t tell her how wrong she was. 

She dilated my eyes and left. 

I took a deep breath and imagined the doctor telling me how long I had. Another year I hoped. I’d quit my job, travel, see the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls. I hated how cliché that was, but I couldn’t think beyond the obvious. Song lyrics played in my head…I needed a little help from my friends. I could make a list of people I wanted to see one last time. We could go to their favorite spots, make a game of it. And then another thought came. It would be easier to learn Braille when I can still see. Most blind people don’t have that option.  

The doctor knocked and walked in with my chart. I checked his demeanor and sensed sadness. He sat on a rolling chair and maneuvered the eye gazing equipment for me to place my head so he could peer into my orbits and declare the prognosis. 

“You have what we call Floaters. If they bother you, blink a few times and they’ll move.” 

“So, I’m not going blind?” I tried to say it lightly, pass it off as a joke, but present an opportunity for him to explain that one day my eyes will be so full of floaters I’ll not be able to blink them away.  

“No. You’re growing older.” He looked at the chart again. “With 20/20 vision. Excellent.” He left before I explained why it wasn’t.

I had not confided my anticipated blindness to anyone, so there was no one to share the joy. I celebrated by looking at everything like it was the first time. I discovered a crack in our living room ceiling that looked like the Mississippi River.  My husband’s face had a few more lines than when we married, but not many. My son ate using his left hand and shoveled in the food. My daughter watched him and looked disgusted. Then saw me watching them both and looked more disgusted.  

I held the joy for a while, but it faded into the normalcy of seeing and paying attention when I remembered I wasn’t. 

Every ten years I had an eye exam, and my far-sightedness remained solid. I only needed the readers I could pick up at the drug store until I turned 70. The farsightedness had slipped significantly, enough for a prescription. And there was the beginning of cataracts forming. Nothing to worry about yet.

Last January I had to renew my driver’s license. I took the eye test without my glasses and correctly identified the letters on the right. “Now read the letters on the left side.”

“There are no letters on the left.”

“Look again.”

I did and saw shapes of monsters in a fog. 

She moved the screen until I could identify the letter E and I passed the test with the restriction that both side view mirrors must be operational. She made an off-the-record suggestion to get my eyes checked.

My eye doctor asked if I had been ill this year, if I had taken any steroids. I hadn’t. “It’s unusual for cataracts to grow this fast.” They were in both eyes, the left worse than the right. His advice was to remove both. 

A good many of my friends have had this surgery. Most accounts were reassuring; a few were not. I booked the surgeries and made it clear to Anyone listening that all previous prayers for blindness were canceled. 

People had said I’ll be happy I did it. They talked about the clarity and the colors. A few artist friends mentioned the textures. And they were right about all of that. The woven bag my brother bought me from Nepal was red, but not the red I thought it was. There was a subtle tone of lightness that made it softer, but the wool texture revealed a series of squares that hardened it. A leaf, also red, but brighter, clearer, lay on a brick path. The bricks, a dark red. But if glanced, easily mistaken for brown. 

 But words can’t describe how alive it all feels. That everything is here to be witnessed. Acknowledged. Loved (and regardless of the cliché, I could find no better words for this).

I know this will become normal again. I feel the beginning of that and I’m asking it to slow down, hold on to this moment as long as possible. As far as eyes allow me to see.