Insights on Kids and Cataracts

I've always seen things quite clearly.

Just ask my kids.

I can spot a dirty dish across a room long before the mice do. I can extract a driver’s license from couch cushions days before its reported missing. I can derail muddy shoes and paws before they’ve sullied the just-mopped floors. I can see weeds in the garden before they’ve even begun to grow. And I can see half-empty water bottles clogging up landfills before they’re removed from cars, bedrooms, bathrooms and bureau drawers.

But one day, I realized that everything had gotten fuzzy. I didn’t see the dog hair clumped in the corner. I didn’t see the spider crawling across the room. I didn’t see the pee drops on the toilet seat before I sat down.

I’d like to say it was because I had outgrown all those minor annoyances. But, no. The eye doctor had a more scientific explanation.

I had a cataract.

“It could be trauma related,” he said, trying to soothe the blow of being diagnosed with an old person’s affliction.  

“Like the trauma of all three of my children moving back home?” I asked.

“I was thinking of something with a little more blunt force.”

I’ve worn contacts forever. And for years I’ve done the monovision thing. Which means that one eye is corrected for distance, the other for close-up. I was one of those mothers who needed to see things crystal clear at all times. Sometimes, of course, it worked against me. But, mostly, it gave me a one-up on what was going on around me, both near and far.

I put up with the cataract for a while, correcting it with stronger and stronger contacts and more and more pairs of reading glasses. And then finally, enough was enough, and I went under the knife.

I’ve had a zillion, or at least a trillion, surgeries in my life. I’m not scared of doctors or hospitals or getting put to sleep. But, cataract surgery is different. Your eyes are wide open for the whole dang thing.

“Don’t worry,” said the surgeon, who’s as adept at slicing out lenses as I am at folding laundry. “You’ll have a drip to keep you calm through the five-minute procedure.”

“Five whole minutes!” I shrieked. “There’s no amount of valium in the world that could keep me from flipping out when I see a scalpel coming at my eye ball.”

To which he simply chuckled and said, “It’s not a scalpel.”

And because I’m tough, don't like to inconvenience my hard-working spouse, and like to support my local merchants, I took an Uber to the eye removal center that morning. And because they’re really strict about not letting their patients drive under the influence, I had my friend Ann scheduled to pick me up.

As I sat alone in the waiting room with dozens and dozens of other cloudy-visioned old folk, my angst overtook my ability to even play Words with Friends. I watched old patient after old patient disappear beyond the swinging doors, returning 20 minutes later with one eye patched and one arm hanging onto a nurse for dear life.

I checked the so-big-even-the-blindest-could-see clock across the room and saw that it was nearly time for Ann to pick me up. Being one who has an aversion to asking for help, I added fretting about how long my friend would have to wait to my rapidly-intensifying scalpel-induced anxieties.

But with enough pacing and heavy sighing, the front desk eventually realized they had forgotten all about me and sheepishly whisked me through the swinging doors before another old bat knew what usurped her.

“Just a little something to calm you down,” the very kind anesthesiologist said as he jabbed a needle into my vein.

“So I won’t care about the scalpel coming at me?”

“Exactly.”

“Wow, this amazing,” I said ten seconds later, feeling the only kind of Zen I’ve ever known coursing through my body.

“What’s really amazing,” the very kind anesthesiologist deadpanned. “Is that I haven’t put any drugs in your body yet.”

Well, as it turned out, I didn’t see the scalpel coming at me. And the surgery was as short and sweet as they promised. I was released with a patch over my eye and a refusal to be escorted to the waiting room.

“I’ve walked under the influence before,” I quipped.

It’s been almost a month now and my vision is crystal clear again. Just in time for my once-dwindling empty nest to slowly but surely fill to capacity.

But this time around, I’ve chosen not to see the piles of clothes that lie on the basement floor. I’ve chosen not to see the dishes piling up on the kitchen counter. The unmade beds, the rapidly-depleting refrigerator and the random pieces of furniture that appear daily in the various living spaces of my home.

Instead, I’m looking at it through the somewhat cloudy eyes of my children. Who don’t have the foresight or hindsight or insight to see that it’s all going to be just fine.

I reassure the daughter that the best times are yet to come. Even though she’s leaving the most fun place she’s ever lived and returning to her attic bedroom. I remind her that four years ago when she tearfully departed Chapel Hill and headed for New Orleans, she was sure that she’d never, ever have as good of friends or as good of a time as she had in college. But she did. And now, with her creeping ever-closer to old age, I can see clearly that whichever path she takes, she’s going to get where she’s going.

I watch the middle child with a middle-child mother’s eye. I know he would prefer to live just about anywhere but home. In the early morning, I hear his floorboards creak as he dashes to catch the 7:13 into Manhattan for another day of stifled creativity at his desk job. Then, I look at the photos he snaps in his spare time and see that sooner or later, one way or another, he’s going to get the shot he deserves.

I look at the recent college graduate and see my uncertain self behind his beard. I see as his eyes roll in tandem with his exhausted sigh when he reads the indulgent-less father’s chores of the day. I see how a summer on a food truck is much less inspiring than the life he's been living as a philosophy major. But, I can also see that as he inches closer to figuring out the meaning of life, he'll discover that his own is filled with purpose and promise.

I see what's going to happen. There will be move ins and move outs. Good jobs and bad wages. Bad jobs and good wages. Full hearts and heart breaks. And it's all going to be just fine. 

And although, to me, it's crystal clear, for some reason, I keep hearing one of my wise old father's favorite sayings doing backflips in my brain.  

“I see,” said the blind man when he really didn’t see at all.

What do you Give a Grown Kid for his Birthday?

“It’s your BIRTHDAY on Tuesday!” I texted my youngest son, but not until after his grandmother offhandedly mentioned that she had sent him a card.

Oops. I knew there was something about May 8^th that sounded vaguely familiar.

“Do you want a present?” I asked.

I was fully expecting the response I’d gotten for the past dozen years.

“Nah.”

And he always meant it. Leo doesn’t like fuss or fanfare. He doesn’t like stuff. When he played baseball there was always a bat or glove or overpriced personal trainer that sufficed as a present. But we both knew he would have gotten those things birthday or not.

Leo doesn’t like money either. He’d just as soon live in a kibbutz. Or a monastery. Or under the stars in Colorado.

Leo is the only member of the family who's not born in December or February. So, by the time May rolls around every year, we've forgotten how to celebrate. Poor Leo has had to share his birthday with Mother’s Day. With his paternal grandmother’s death day. With baseball tournaments. And final exams.  

Leo was never much of a talker. He kept his thoughts to himself and, as third children so often do, learned to fly under the radar. He grew up in the shadow of his brother and sister and built his entire identity around baseball. It was all he did. And all he cared about.

Or so I thought.

Until we spent eight straight hours in the Old Minivan together.

Four years this very weekend ago, the whole family drove 500 miles down to North Carolina for the daughter's college graduation. In two cars. The plan was that one parent would stay and help pack up the daughter. The other would head home after the graduation party with Leo so he wouldn't miss his game the next day.  I am way better equipped to drive through the night than sort through the daughter's personal possessions, so it was Leo and I who took off together at 9:30 pm.

“You better keep me awake,” I said to the least talkative human I had ever raised.

And he did. He talked. And talked. And talked. A lifetime of talk spewed from his heart. And he hasn’t stopped since.

Before that overnight drive home from Chapel Hill, I lived with the assumption that Leo would play four years of Division I baseball, followed by a short stint in the minor leagues before heading off to CitiField. Or Camden Yards. Heck, I would have even become a Yankees' fan if I had to.

I never let go of that dream. But he did.

I learned in that car ride that Leo wanted more out of life than baseball. That he, gulp, had a creative side. I had long assumed that he and his friends were up to no good all those nights in the eaves of our attic. It never occurred to me that they were making music and shooting videos and writing scripts. And not a bit of it was about baseball. 

Somewhere around milepost 315, Leo made another confession. 

“I don’t know why I never talked to you before.”

Three months later, Leo went off to college and played his Division I baseball. But, after one semester, he gave it up to explore who he was without a glove on his hand. This Sunday, he graduates from Rutgers University. But, even with a degree in Philosophy and a minor in Creative Writing, he's still a long way from unearthing his true purpose in life.

For the past four years Leo and I have been each other's creative crusaders. We share our love for cleverly-crafted words and well-written movie scripts. And sometimes, we even agree on what is genius. We dream of one day sipping cocktails together at the Golden Globes. He knows that I want to write the next Juno. I know that he's more likely to do it than I. And that, while it will be a far cry from Juno, it will be brilliant. 

Leo and I bounce ideas off one another. He reads my stop-and-start again novels. He helps me develop characters. And tells me when he thinks I'm taking the easy way out. I read his screenplays and watch his short films and marvel at the places his young mind goes. And tell him when I think he's taking the hard way through. 

We send each other inspirational texts.

“Bang out a chapter today!”

And motivational quotes from writers like Paulo Coelho:
Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.

And memes that live on refrigerator magnets:

“So, want anything for your birthday?” I texted my last born. 

“Write me something!”

“It would be much easier to give you a thousand dollars!” I responded, knowing full well that he didn't mean that I should write him a blog. 

“$1000 has way less worth.”

Today, my youngest child turns 22. On Sunday, he'll become a full-fledged college graduate. On Monday, his real life begins.

I have no idea where Leo's life journey will lead. Nor, I'm sure, does he. But somewhere along the way, he's going to take that step, intentional or not, that will point him down the path he was meant to take.

And in the meantime, as long as it's legal, no matter where he goes or what he does, I'll continue to be his biggest fan.

Because there's something kind of endearing about knowing that your kid, the very kid who was put on this earth to defy, deny and demoralize you, has more faith in you than you have in yourself.

So, back atcha, kid.

My story is written. I just have to put it to paper. But, yours Leo, yours is yet to be lived.

Write me something, Leo. Write me something really good.