Imagine emerging from a modest cataract (left eye) removal procedure and discovering, for the first time in 81 years, that you could see, from that eye only, admittedly, but still—you could really see.
You’d known, for most of those 81 years, that there were trees of course, and often branches, but you hadn’t known about twigs or individual leaves, and there were, you knew, little things living little lives among the trees and branches but certainly not readily distinguished from one another. But now, here’s this lovely creature on a twig with dotted wing tips, 12 black dots, as it happens, on the perimeter of each.
You’d seen birds, some with generally distinctive colors, but had no idea these too were so wildly different and so beautifully and astonishingly intricate. Here’s this blue jay looking back at you from the feeder— that regal crest and the collar around its neck and the dexterity of those little feet, capable of a reliable grip on nearly anything.
One of their kids was Janey, my first girlfriend, older and wiser at six than I was at five…
And flowers! You knew the yard was covered in dandelions every summer but not that each tiny blossom was a hundred individual petals and that these were home to even smaller but now also distinctly different insects.
Perhaps the most profound revelation though was suddenly connecting faces with voices. For 80 years many distinctive voices, if not very near at hand, were easily identified as emanating from the same source, but not be assigned an identity.
In 1948, my grandparents worked for a lovely Boston family, the Rhinelanders, he sort of handyman, now and then a driver, and Gram the cook. Each summer the family—and Gram and Gramp—returned to their enchanting Vinalhaven home, surrounded by woods and ocean, and my two younger brothers and I enjoyed wonderfully imaginative and engaging afternoons there as guests of them and their own four kids.
Their parents spent industrious hours doing things like arranging treasure hunts by running—surely it was miles of string—through the trees, and then, after an “On your mark, Get ready, Go,” these were followed by we eager and excited children, each with his or her own string, in pursuit of a prize of some sort at the other end.
If the weather didn’t cooperate, we could count on being entertained in the boathouse, or if it did, we were often there anyway, digging clams under supervision or gathering around a piano and singing. We each returned home from these magical days enriched and full of stories—of surprises and adventure and snacks—and looking very much forward to the next Rhinelander weekend.
One of their kids was Janey, my first girlfriend, older and wiser at six than I was at five, and she is now the woman I was talking about to begin with, still older—and no doubt wiser—but more importantly, now fully engaged with the world around her, at 81.
Fully, because the stunning revelation that revealed itself after the bandages were removed from her left eye became profoundly more apparent after the right eye was done and life is now very much an adventure as, each day, nature unwraps another wonder, or reveals another otherwise unknown compelling treasure.
I’m apparently among these revelations, as Janey recently observed, “If I’d known you were this handsome back then, well, things would certainly have been different.”
Phil Crossman lives on Vinalhaven and owns the Tidewater Motel. He may be contacted at philcrossman.vh@gmail.com.
