Learning to See

This year I turn sixty and eye surgery this week made me really feel my age. There I sat in a big massage chair having taken a muscle relaxer and listening to soft music waiting my turn in the assembly line of young men and women waiting for the laser machine to hum warm and all the right lights to flash.

The kind nurses reassured us each and reminded us not to touch our faces. She gave us sterile booties to cover out dirty shoes and a hairnet to wear. I felt like I was in the dryer row at a beauty salon and decided I might just pretend I was at a spa. So I closed my eyes and tried to totally relax and pretend I was going to have a facial after the massage.

Cucumbers slices on each eye, cool and fresh, or was a nurse washing my skin around my eyes. Slathering on the mud or a washing of Mercurochrome. Hmmm… Certainly doesn’t smell like a spa.

Few more minutes and no more glasses. The doctor comes in wearing surgery scrubs “Alice,” he says? “No, Elece, I say. “Elece? Nice to meet you. Follow me.” So the rest is a blur and a pain. I was afraid and the whole thing was a terrible ordeal. But now it is over and I can see the sky and the sun and the flowers.

Today I talked to my mom in Michigan. I told her I needed to hear her voice and she said, “I’m here and I am still your Mama and you are still my girl.” Oh how nice to have such a mama! I told her I feel like a skink, a lizard, because if the skink loses a tail it will grow back. The doctor cut off the top layer of my cornea and it will grow back in three days. That’s pretty amazing to me.What good care God takes of all his creatures.

Now I will have to learn to see. Not from nothing but from the blurry eyes to the new prescription for sight that the doctor gave me with laser. Mono-vision will give me one eye correction a short distance so I can read, see the computer screen and the car’s dashboard without strain. The other eye to see into the distance. Gradually, my brain will learn to see that way.

I hope that I will see much clearer and better. I hope that flowers will be brighter colors and that faces will be sharp and clear. I hope my heart will see differently too, always appreciating all the beauty and wonder around me, that could have been lost. I hope it will help me look with more compassion on those who can’t see. I hope this trial and time of healing will teach me to truly see.