Mine eyes have seen the dust motes

I guess when it comes to matters of health, or lack thereof, I’m one of the lucky ones, having enjoyed doctor-free living for nearly the entirety of my time on earth. I like to attribute that to making good choices, which undoubtedly helps, but the reality is some things are just unavoidable, no matter how many sit-ups we do or how many pounds of kale we consume. Such was the case when I recently went for my annual eye exam, and the doctor casually threw out the phrase, “You’ve got cataracts.” I mulled this over for a moment and asked for a timeframe for the surgery, expecting maybe a couple of years, even a decade or two. “Now,” he responded.

I drove home in quiet contemplation, making all kinds of deals with myself in service of avoiding having a scalpel poke around my eyeballs. So my vision’s crappy, big deal! I could still kind of make out road signs, and although the words were a smeary blur, I could usually guess by the color the message intended; stop, yield, railroad crossing. Yeah, I thought to myself with satisfaction, I can mostly tell. I drove on, convinced I had plenty of time before the dreaded surgery despite the triple starburst of stoplights ahead, the halos of oncoming headlights and the near blindness I experienced navigating my way home after sundown.

That night, my husband Max said, you really should have it done now. I imagined he was getting a bit tired of having to name every character in every scene of every show or movie we watched, thanks to my inability to see faces, let alone read subtitles or close-ups on phones with texting vital to the plot. I got his frustration, really I did. But I was the one with eyeballs going under the blade. So I couldn’t see details on a 65-inch TV screen, so what! I could still read a book if I held it really, really close. Mostly.

The deciding factor made itself known when I called out in alarm to my daughter Zoe to come to the window and witness a tree bending sideways, slowly making its way around the neighbor’s yard. That’s not a tree, she said. That’s old Bob, weeding his garden.

And so the surgeries were scheduled, and much to my relief, I remembered nothing of the procedure, except for the doctor strapping my head to the gurney, which in itself was pretty alarming, but that was the worst of it. By that evening, I was sitting in my living room window, seeing a range of colors at sunset as if I’d never witnessed a sunset before, marveling at the details on the feathers of a goldfinch’s wing, dumbfounded by the definition of individual blades of grass and pebbles in the road. My vision was so clear, it seemed nothing short of miraculous. But there was a catch: dirt, and its presence in every square inch of my home.

Full disclosure here, I am something of a clean freak. And so I assumed, despite the years of disintegrating vision, that I had, indeed, been keeping a spanking clean house. Imagine my dismay as I perused the rooms in all their dust-bunny’d, grimy, cobwebbed glory, an unconscionable state of things, one that called for immediate action. I set to with manic fervor, bucket of scalding Murphy’s Oil Soap, degreasers, sponges, scrubbers, mop and broom, rubber gloves up to my elbows, taking on one room at a time until it was white glove perfect. Day after day, I relentlessly tackled the unstoppable march of filth, wearing myself down to the bone, until my daughter, seeing me in a state of near exhaustion, forced me to ease up on the crazy. I knew she was right, but it took all of my will to turn a blind eye to the rolling tumbleweeds of cat fur and the relentless infiltration of Orange County black dirt. I knew I needed to find balance if I was going to survive my new superhero vision.

And so I made a pact with myself. For every hour spent cleaning, I’d spend one hour doing something calming, like writing, or birdwatching, or sitting in my yard with a good book. Which is how I came to observe my neighbor, old Bob, out in his garden again, plucking weeds, only this time I did not mistake him for a tree. This time, across the acre between our properties, I noticed a stain on his shirt, an unmistakable splat of ketchup. He probably didn’t even know it was there. Poor guy. I bet he has cataracts.