True story: When I was in 8th grade my friend at the time, Nancy B. and I thought it would be really cool to go to school on Monday witha tan. So there in my room with the purple shag carpet, we put on our bikinis and plugged in a sun lamp. We even put on the radio and laid out towels to get the full effect. We were going to get tan lines by gosh-no one could tell us anything different. Of course, after 10 minutes lying on the floor with one sunlamp clamped to a shelf- the tan lines were not coming. We could not feel the heat. We moved closer- but then ten minutes later- it just was not working for us. Bronzed, we were not….and it was beginning to get chilly. SO we came up with the idea of just putting our faces up to the lamp….if our faces were sun kissed- that would count, right? We took turns on and off in front of the heat-while visions of being sun kissed danced in our heads. Then Nancy B. had to go home so we called it quits. The first one who saw any hint of sun lamp kissed on our face was to call the other. By nature I am competitive. And as we have already learned: If one drop erases one wrinkle surely a whole slathering would tighten my entire face. Remember?
I turned that sun lamp back on and sat in front of it for a good 15 minutes. I could feeeeeeeeeeel the warmth of the lamp turning me into a sun goddess. People would ask where I was over the weekend and I would be able to lie and say : Bouge Beach. Because that is where all the surfers went to hang and curl. Only I was not old enough to be at Bouge by myself- so confessing I was there on a Monday was sure to make me seem older to everyone and certainly much more cool. I already knew what shirt I was going to wear with my sky blue Levi cords to bring out my tanned……face.
Only I never made it to school that Monday. In fact, I did not get to go back to school until that Thursday. My eyes had gotten sunburned ( I was not about to wear those stupid looking eye pod things…no one does anyway). So sunburned in-fact that my eyes swelled shut. When I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I was in excruciating pain and could not see, I very dramatically called out to my entire family who were obviously asleep: “My eyes! My eyes! I can’t see!!” And then, when no one came running to help, I very Helen Keller like made my way up the two levels of stairs, navigating wall hangings ( my mother and her macrame) and art work worth thousands ( or so my father always said) All the while calling out: “My eyes! My eyes! I can’t see!!” Just as I made it to my parents room, my mother was there, asking what had happened to my face. I explained, in between sobs, the whole sun lamp episode and in between “I told you so’s” and cold compresses, that all Nancy B and I wanted was to go to school tan. And say we had been at Bouge Beach. BY OURSELVES.
I was in bed for two days with tea bags over my eyes. To this day, if I so much as cough one of my brothers says: “My eyes! My eyes! “-in sort of the same way Nancy Kerrigan yelled in front of the entire world: “Whhhhhhhhhhhhyyy?”after her run in with Tonya Harding’s idiotic boyfriend and a baseball bat.
But here is the thing: I have always been able to see. The all knowing, hate to face it but I am gonna anyway seeing. Crystal clear. The kind of seeing that allows us to grow-if we choose to. Or shut down- if we choose to. The kind of seeing that can, at first appear to be disbelief-but upon closer viewing-belief of the real kind. It is not dramatic, this seeing-or easy-on any level- ever. And at times it first appears fuzzy or blurred-but once I adjust and take on what is in front of me-there is no not seeing.
My daughter was recently diagnosed with a cataract. We have to retrain the eye to see again. To work through the blurr the cataract is causing. “to see around the problem” is what the doctor said. To see around the problem. To see. There is no not seeing. This child of mine. Me.