{"id":283,"date":"2009-02-03T13:42:20","date_gmt":"2009-02-03T17:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gloriacrist.com\/blog\/?p=283"},"modified":"2009-02-04T19:34:10","modified_gmt":"2009-02-04T23:34:10","slug":"my-eyesmy-eyesi-cant-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gloriacrist.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/my-eyesmy-eyesi-cant-see\/","title":{"rendered":"My Eyes!…My Eyes!………I Can’t See!!!!……."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>True story:\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So there in my room with the purple shag carpet, we put on our bikinis and plugged in a sun lamp.\u00a0 We even put on the radio and laid out towels to get the full effect.\u00a0 We were going to get tan lines by gosh-no one could tell us anything different.\u00a0 Of course, after 10 minutes lying on the floor with one sunlamp clamped to\u00a0a\u00a0shelf- the tan lines were not coming.\u00a0 We could not feel the heat.\u00a0 We moved closer- but then ten minutes later- it just was not working for us.\u00a0 Bronzed, we were not….and it was beginning to get chilly.\u00a0 SO we came up with the idea of just putting our faces up to the lamp….if our faces were sun kissed-\u00a0that would count, right?\u00a0 We took turns on and off in front of the heat-while visions of being sun kissed danced in our heads.\u00a0 Then Nancy B. had to go home so we called it quits.\u00a0 The first one who saw any hint of sun lamp kissed on our face was to call the other.\u00a0 By nature I am competitive.\u00a0 And as we have already learned:\u00a0 If one drop erases one wrinkle surely a whole slathering would tighten my entire face.\u00a0 Remember?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I turned that sun lamp back on and sat in front of it for a good 15 minutes.\u00a0 I could feeeeeeeeeeel the warmth of the lamp turning me into a sun goddess.\u00a0 People would ask where I was over the weekend and I would\u00a0be able to lie and say :\u00a0 Bouge Beach.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I already knew what shirt I was going to wear with my\u00a0sky blue Levi cords to bring out my tanned……face.<\/p>\n

Only I never made it to school that Monday.\u00a0 In fact, I did not get to go back to school until that Thursday.\u00a0 My eyes had gotten sunburned ( I was not about to wear those stupid looking eye pod things…no one does anyway).\u00a0 So sunburned in-fact that\u00a0my eyes\u00a0swelled shut.\u00a0 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:\u00a0 “My eyes!\u00a0 My eyes!\u00a0 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\u00a0hangings ( my mother and her macrame) and art work worth thousands <\/em>( or so my father always said)\u00a0 All the while calling out:\u00a0 “My eyes!\u00a0 My eyes!\u00a0 I can’t see!!”\u00a0 Just as I made it to my parents room, my mother was there, asking what had happened to my face.\u00a0\u00a0 I explained, in between sobs, the whole sun lamp episode and in between “I told you so’s” and cold compresses, that all\u00a0Nancy B and I wanted was to go to school tan.\u00a0And say we had been at Bouge Beach.\u00a0 BY OURSELVES<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I was in bed for two days with tea bags over my eyes.\u00a0 To this day, if I so much as cough one of my brothers says:\u00a0 “My eyes!\u00a0 My eyes!\u00a0“-in sort of the same way Nancy Kerrigan yelled in front of the entire world:\u00a0 “Whhhhhhhhhhhhyyy?”after her run in with Tonya Harding’s idiotic boyfriend and a baseball bat.<\/p>\n

But here is the thing:\u00a0 I have always been able to see.\u00a0 The all knowing, hate to face it but I am gonna anyway\u00a0seeing.\u00a0 Crystal clear. The kind of seeing that allows us to grow-if we choose to. Or shut down- if we choose to.\u00a0 The kind of seeing that can, at first appear to be disbelief-but upon closer viewing-belief of the real kind.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0 My daughter was recently diagnosed with a cataract.\u00a0 We have to retrain the eye to see again.\u00a0 To work through the blurr the cataract is causing.\u00a0 “to see around the problem” is what the doctor said.\u00a0 To see around the problem.\u00a0 To see.\u00a0 There is\u00a0no not seeing. This child of mine. Me.<\/p>\n

<\/div>