Age of Miracles

In second grade I got the measles. Although I was warned against reading, and kept in a darkened room, I read anyway. Now, whether or not the continued reading and concomitant eyestrain was bad for my measled eyes or not, shortly afterwards my eyesight began to deteriorate. By the time I was in third grade, my marks were dropping, and teachers expressed concern about my classroom abilities. My parents often admonished me for screwing up my face in a grotesque manner, assuming that I was doing it to be a pill. One afternoon, my father took me with him to do some shopping. He realized that he had forgotten one of the things he was supposed to get, and called my mother to ask what it was. He wanted to tell her where we were, and asked me to read him the large sign on a storefront across the street. I told him that I couldn't read it. Now, he knew full well that I could read, and the inescapable conclusion was that I couldn't see. He took me that day to an optometrist for an examination, which revealed that my eyesight was dreadful. Basically, without vision correction, I was blind. I got eyeglasses, and suddenly, a bright, crisp, sharp world appeared where before there had before been only murky blurs. All the way home, I exclaimed in joy at all the sights. My parents were heartbroken at having misunderstood. Nobody had suspected, not even me. Not being able to see was just normal; I supposed that the world was just blurry, that's all.

Around the time that my father died, I found my night vision deteriorating, and that oncoming lights dazzled me and made night driving hazardous. I felt that my glasses were dirty all the time, and that a dull fog obscured the world. An eye examination revealed that cataracts were developing in both eyes, and surgery would be necessary sooner rather than later. Cataract surgery has progressed considerably in recent decades, and after the procedures I could not only see almost perfectly, almost immediately, but a whole world of color was restored. Everything is sharp, and clear and astonishingly blue. I can see without glasses for the first time since second grade.

Almost nobody gets measles anymore. We live in an age of miracles.

9/27/05

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Age of Miracles

 
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