August 26, 2021

The second I stepped off the plane back into the Albuquerque summer sunlight, my eyes about jumped out of my head in protest. A year of cloudy Dutch weather had rendered my eyes sensitive to even the most gentle of sunbeams, leaving me with an instant headache as my eyes strained to do something, anything, […]

Eleven and possibly too youngfor the responsibility of small lenses,solution bottles, biweekly enzyme cleaning. Possibly, but when we climbed in the car,Mom pulled down the mirror she kept aboveher seat, and I could see my eyes. I decidedI could do this. The world no longer disappearedwhen I turned my head from it,just stepped aside, to

To watch the shower move downthe length of the street, and continue, made me aware the gift given to mewas stepping outside just then to witness the rain darkening the asphalt, to observethe line between wet and dry diminish until the rain reached me, and in its wake,to inhale the olfactory stimulant of ionized air.

At the age of six I put onFor the first time what you invented,And discovered that trees had leaves,Individual leaves! Since then, I have read many booksAnd studied the faces of friends. Now, each nightI carefully place under the bedWhat you have bequeathedSo with the morning I may reachTo receive the day.

Writing without my glasses I can see the blue lines,the white spaces, but the words are blurred, though my pen knows these familiar trackson the page, my efforts resembling a child’s birthday party at the bowling alley,where rubber bumpers in the gutters of the lanes guide the ball to the pins, promising the toppleof at

My true anecdote is this. During the day, I went to the store and bought several items. Included with them was a small square barcode with an adhesive backing on it, and somehow this got left on the dining room table. That evening I was at my friend Tom’s house. When I needed to clean

I didn’t start wearing glasses until I was a junior in college. I probably needed them for a year before that, but I always made excuses for my poor eyesight. I was in college, so I argued that my eyes were just tired because I was, even if I had slept for 12 hours the

I didn’t get to use this technique until I was 25. I was working on my doctorate, and I was teaching part-time at a community college. I was talking about some essay or short story, I don’t remember what, and I took off my glasses to make a point. My moment had finally come, and

In January 1961, my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Singer, recognized that I needed glasses from watching me squinting constantly. She sent a note home, but my grandmother didn’t get me tested until school was out. I don’t know why she waited so long, but I finally saw an eye doctor in June. I sat in the

At home, I ran through the house to stand on the back porch looking north at the Ball Brothers factory, hundreds of feet away. I saw every leaf on every tree for miles around (well, almost miles), every petal and color on every flower, all the rocks in the railroad beds. I said, “Mammaw! I