Eye Update and my Widow's Memory Bank

You may or may not remember that I’ve been nervous about getting through my cataract surgeries without getting an infection in my left eye, the one with the macular pucker. I was told that the fourth week out was the most critical time for one to appear and the doctor started me on eye drops a full week before the surgery to help prevent an infection and here I am in the seventh week post-surgery and up until today I was still doing six drops a day in that eye, with two different medications. At one point, between the two eyes I was doing 16 drops a day with four medications. The doctor has been measuring changes in that pucker weekly and on the fourth week added a new drop to “let out the gas” which I’m sure isn't a perfectly proper medical term but “letting out the gas” works for me. And ohmygod does that drop hurt/sting/burn. Takes me a full three minutes to recover from putting that one in and it has me moaning and groaning as if I’m having sex, even comes with a few “Oh God's” spoken out loud. Yes, I'm worried about what my neighbor on our shared wall thinks if she can hear me.

 

Today at my eye appointment I flunked the test on my pucker so I still can't get a new eye glass prescription written until the "cornea quits moving," another, interesting non-medical term but the good news is I now only have to do three drops a day, two of which are the ones that come with sound effects. The bad news is I walked out of that office deflated that I have to keep going back to track the damn pucker. At least I'm past the point where an infection is a major concern. When I asked that question the doctor replied, "Think so." The possibility still reminds, however, so I will keep following the rules---be militant with the drops, no wearing any eye make-up or rubbing my eye and don't get water in it.

 

After the surgeries I expected the world would be like the opening of the Wizard of Oz that starts out in black and white then turns into bright colors. I do see colors noticeable brighter with my right eye but not the left. I’m legal now to drive without glasses which hasn’t been true in a long time. This not needing glasses except to read has me misplacing my glasses more in the last month than in all of the last year. 

 

A few days ago I found myself in the cafe' without my glasses to read the menu and one of my fellow residents said, “We’ll read it to you.” And they did. But that brought back a memory of a time my husband was mad at me for something long forgotten. We were out to dinner with another couple when I discovered I didn’t have my glasses and I asked Don to read the menu to me. His left-over anger from whatever we’d fought about earlier caused him to slash out at me---the bottom line being he refused to do it. His outburst left the other couple shocked and speechless. It took a lot to anger Don but when he was his fiery glare was enough to stop anyone from retorting. 

 

Flashes of memories are like that when we age, aren’t they? Something small and meaningless can trigger a memory that can consume me for several hours as I try to recall more details. As with most of my flash-memories, I wasn’t successful at doing an archaeological style dig into that day at the restaurant. But I suppose the only important thing to remember is that Don didn’t make a practice out of embarrassing me in public. I can count on the fingers of one hand the numbers of times when that happened in the 42 years we were together. 

 

In January Don will have been gone nine years. In some ways it seems like 9 months and in other ways it seems like 900 years. It took nearly half of those years for the widow’s pedestal many of us put our spouses on to start crumbing, and for me to see the full spectrum of Don’s personality again. It’s human nature I’m guessing, to forget the petty disagreements when someone has passed and to keep the good memories closer to the surface---the Disney version of our relationships---the one where no one has hissy-fits over toothpaste caps not replaced or ever farts while holding our heads under the bed covers.

 

Looking at my past is like looking out one eye, and then the other post surgery. I have two distinctive views---one probably accurate to its history, the other more like looking though a filter of rainbows and swishing puppy dogs tails pushing the colors around into a mosaic of happiness. If/when dementia catches me in its trap the big question will be which version of my history will be locked inside my head as I withdraw from the world? And can we program our brains to choose while we’re still logical, thinking human beings? My dad and brother both walked into the land of dementia. One mostly accepted it, the other fights it, fears it. What will I do when my time comes? I've always had a fertile fantasy life, will I  even know when dementia takes up residence? ©

Weird Dinner Experience and Painting Class

 

I ran into weird situation that put me in a mini meltdown during dinner in the fine dining restaurant on campus. I’m getting used to having people invite themselves to sit with me or me with them but something happened last night that flustered me to the point I embarrassed myself, then tried to back-track so I didn’t hurt a woman’s feelings. But what about my feelings? Why don’t people listen to others when we say, "No thank you" so many times we sound like parrots in a pet shop? 

We were total strangers who ended up sitting across the table from each other and when her dinner came I remarked that I had ordered the cider chicken last week and it looked entirely different than what she was served. “How so?” she asked and I told her, “for one you got five times the amount of yams that I got and I didn’t get any of the dried apple embellishments on top.” 

I was wondering if the chef was reacting to complaints about not serving enough vegetables with his entrees or if someone else was plating stuff in the kitchen and I wish I’d said that out loud because the next thing I know she picked several of the dried apples rings off her chicken and was trying to hand them to me. “These are really good, try them” to which I politely rejected her more than five times before she handed them to her husband. Hey, I didn’t know where here fingers had been! For all I know she could have been expressing the anal glands on a gerbil before coming down to dinner.

Then she started spearing yams with her fork, a fork she’d had in her mouth already and she was putting them on my plate. “Take them. I can’t eat these all.” I panicked. “Please don’t do that! I don't want them," I said, my voice getting more demanding with each time I begged her to stop. She had eight cubes of yams on my plate before I took my spoon and started transferring them to my bread plate. I’d had enough of her pushing food at me. In my mind’s eye I could see cartoon-like germs about to jump off those cubes of yam and contaminate my sea bass.

“I can’t stand eating off other people’s plates or have them eat off mine!” I told her and everyone else within an eight foot radius. Call me a germaphobic if you want but swapping germs with a total stranger is not in my wheelhouse. Sure, if she had been a cute guy and it was 50 years ago and we were clearly headed toward a night of playing kissy-face I have shared food in that situation but that was then and this in now---whatever that means. I've even taken a few offered fries from someone I know well, but only if my fingers alone touched them. My husband and I never ate off each other’s plates---at least not after his stroke when I knew exactly where his one working hand had been and it wasn't under a water facet as often as it should have been---and this total stranger wanted me to stick food in my mouth that had her fork germs inside? During a world-wide pandemic no less!

Trying to explain my outburst I said, “It’s a childhood thing. I was punished at the dinner table for sharing food.” I didn’t mention it was the dog I was sharing foods with that I didn't want to eat and it was my brother who'd sneak food onto my plate that he knew I didn't like. I got caught, he never did. She snatched my bread plate full of yams off my side of the table and passed it her husband who then asked her if he could try a bite of her chicken. Shockingly she turned him down with a, “No, I like it too much.” 

There was a fourth person at our table. A woman from my painting class and we had a conversation about our last class before the couple joined us. She was upset with the teacher and says she’s not going back. When arriving at class she told the instructor she was expecting a call from a furniture delivery man, that she’d have to go let him in but would be right back to class after her new table was in place. When the call came and she got up to leave the instructor barked, “This is not a good time to leave! I’m teaching something important here.” She left anyway and who could blame her. 

When she came back the instructor ignored her and sat down at another student’s place and painted on her canvas for 15-20 minutes. I’d be livid if she done that to my canvas. That’s not teaching in my opinion. At one point she said, “It’s still your painting. I’m just moving the paints around.” Ya, sure.

When she critiqued my work, she said, “The side of your barn would be perfect if it was on other side of the building and not that one. It’s not dark enough. Remember the light ALWAYS comes from the right.” “Unless it comes from the left,” I said, not meaning to be antagonistic. It just rolled off my tongue. “No, remember the sun comes up from the east, so the light source is on the right side. Always.” “Maybe my light is coming from a sunset instead of a sunrise,” That time I did mean to poke the bear. She walked away shaking her head and I darken my barn's siding.  

To be fair, I'm not entirely sure if the instructor meant to say the east sun/right side "rule" applies to all paintings. It's more logical to think that she misspoke and meant just the canvases we were working. She did, however, plant doubt in my head about lighting rules so after class I looked through some art books and got reacquainted with the four basic light sources: back lighting, front lighting, form lighting and rim lighting.

That said, I need to once again post a disclaimer. I really do like this feisty Elf of a woman. She’s over 90 and speaks her “Truth” with conviction. Me? I have been known to panic with my Truth, letting my inner child's feelings get hurt (see top half of this blog entry). She also has me thinking art again and acting like a mouthy teenager and I like that. She’s also got what I don’t have---a great eye for mixing colors. It was amazing in an appalling sort of way to watch her turn my classmate's blue barn into a brown one. ©