She was coming right at me. She was required to wait. She did not. She ran her red light and came directly at me.

She was an elderly lady, about the age of someone who voted for Wendell Willkie. Seated well below the steering wheel of what appeared to be one of Elvis’s old 1958 Cadillacs, she was, at the same time, talking on a cellphone and smoking a cigarette, two bad moves.

It got worse.

She was wearing those big dark sunglasses they give you after you’ve had cataract surgery. As she slowly passed, I could hear her car radio. She was listening to The Carpenters’ “Close To You.” Yes. She was. Yes, this is a true story.

This week, the memory of that vision became up close and personal.

She, who has worn glasses since she was 12 years old, elected to have cataract surgery. This was not an easy decision. Accepting cataract surgery is to accept the coming of old age.

She, who has worn glasses since she was 12 years old, elected to have cataract surgery. This was not an easy decision. Accepting cataract surgery is to accept the coming of old age.

It’s not like having a colonoscopy. You can hide that. You don’t have to tell anyone. Nobody knows you’ve had it. Nobody can tell. It’s not like you walk funny or anything afterwards.

But cataract surgery. Everybody knows it. After the surgery, you’re forced to wear those big black glasses, not fashionable ones like Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, but like the kind actor Victor Mature wore when he played blind Samson and got mad and brought the house down on the Philistines, or like those worn by the lady who tried to kill me.

I know this woman. She loves her fashionable glasses. She has three pairs in different colors. I also know that she, like all of us, is sensitive about her age and that trotting around in those big black glasses that signal the coming of mortal winter wasn’t going to be easy, but I wished the best for her.

Ultimately, she made the choice because reading was growing more difficult. It became more intense when, as we were driving home one night, she said she was seeing “halos” around the street lamps.

I thought maybe this was a Catholic thing. I remember my mother, a devout Catholic, saw halos around street lamps after she had a couple of Christmas Eve gin and tonics. Now I know it was just cataracts.

And so it was done. She, who is fearless under most conditions, save confronting spiders, pulled it off well. I sat with her through most of the procedure, as I have been told that my turn under the knife was next. It’s comforting to know that the procedure is painless, and that the results are exciting.

She will, she was told, not have to wear glasses. She will of course, as she is concerned that without them, her alleged wrinkles will be in full view. She was told that she can wear them fitted with plain glass. Those are the kind that Eddie Cantor and Groucho Marx wore for comedy effect. They didn’t need them either.

Now, having to wait two weeks before the second eye is dealt with, she has almost perfect vision in the one eye. This is where the “be careful what you wish for” part comes in. By holding one hand over the old eye, she can see things she never saw before: the hair in my ears and nose, the microscopic bits of food on the dishes I just scrubbed, that I hadn’t shaved that day, lint on my jacket, dust on the furniture I had just cleaned.

I remembered how sweet she was, years ago, after her hand operation, after dental surgery and her colonoscopy. Sweet as flowers in May. Now I’m afraid that she will spend days walking around the house with that hand over one eye, checking the corners I’ve swept for bits of litter.

In two weeks, she will have the other done. That means that by Christmas she’ll be chirping about how blue the sky really is, how the tree lights have no halos and how I really have to have something done about my ear hair. Oh Lord.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.

 

Copy the Story Link