Category: Aging gratefully

Beyond the cataract curtains

Joy Clough4 Comments

You know that feeling when you finally peel aside your dingy thermal window shades and behold the world all around you again? And you wonder if everything was always that bright, or if you’ve just been transported out of your Maine winter mole hole into a vibrant new dimension where the grass really is greener and the yonder the greatest blue ever?

Well, I sure do. I’ve got it major big time right now, and I didn’t even need to wait until May, or whenever almost-spring-but-not-quite-summer arrives back in Rangeley, and I can finally let some full-on sun inside. Because this year, I went way beyond what I could pull off with rolled-up cabin curtains and Windex. I went and got my eyes fixed!

“Didja see that over there?” When folks asked, my default answer was always no…not really. Oh, I’d follow your pointer finger and say “Yeah…wow,” or something moderately convincing till you stopped asking. But what you saw as an eight-pointer or a spike buck or an obviously too tame fake archery target was, for me, just some deer-shaped thing off in the distance. And the bald eagle in my front yard? Well, he had to be soaring pretty low for me to give him the recognition he deserved.

Over the years, I did my best to take full advantage of whatever optometric assistance was available. I got my first pair of glasses, the smallest pair of sparkly blue cat-eye specs, when my third-grade vision test revealed I had the eyesight of a poor little school mouse. After that, each time I couldn’t work my way down the eye chart, I’d work my way up the spectrum of corrective lens technology. I wore contacts back when most people couldn’t imagine how I could “leave something like that” in my eye. I had huge Eighties aviator glasses with so much reflective glass in them that, if I wasn’t careful where I set them down in broad daylight, they were a fire hazard. I graduated to Transitions and Progressives, and whatever other fancy lens labels were in fashion for making me feel better about paying a premium for brown-tinted granny trifocals. Every few years, I’d get a new prescription and a new pair of bright red Zennis…until that just wasn’t enough anymore.

When my eye doctor first diagnosed cataracts, I was surprised. That was something that happened to old people, I said, not me…not yet, anyways. She set aside her little thousand-volt floodlight, met my bleary gaze, and politely replied, “Yes, you.” She said I was right about the “old” part, and wrong about the “not yet” part, because the vast majority of lifelong spectacle-wearing, almost-septuagenarians like me form little dark clouds inside their eyeballs, also known as cataracts. (Turns out teeth and toenails aren’t the only things that get yellow and brittle with age. Your crystalline lenses do, too, but who knew?) However, cataracts are mentioned in the same breath as surgery for good reasons, she said, and I was one of them. Intraocular lens implantation could give me a nearly-perfect shot at nearly-perfect vision. And thanks to all the visionaries making it the safest, most common surgical procedure performed, I had more choices than ever. I could desire an outcome and actually see it come true.

My mother never lived long enough to wear out her eyes. And my father got by after middle age with a pair of readers or, in his case, fly-tyers. So, pretty much everything I knew about cataracts came from older friends who’d suddenly show up barefaced, or trying out new ultra-generic glasses they hoped did the trick, because that one pair was all Medicare paid for after surgery.

“What are your glasses-wearing goals?” the surgeon’s assistant asked during my pre-op evaluation. “How clearly do you expect to see at different distances without them?

“Well, I don’t need to be up there with the yard eagle,” I told her, “but I am tired of being a bat. And I don’t mind wearing reading glasses when I need to, as long as I can find some sparkly red ones.”

“You’re gonna be thrilled with what we can do for you,” she said. It was the first time thrilled—and anybody doing something beyond confirming I needed stronger magnification hooked onto my face—was part of any eye doctor visit. Matter of fact, the only time in 60 years I’d been even moderately elated about the eye doctor was at Halloween when there was a bowl of chocolate eyeball candies out on the check-in desk.

But this wasn’t my regular eye doctor. This, according to their motto, was “Tomorrow’s eyecare today,” a time warp I wanted to enter as soon as I set foot in the one-stop, exclusively all-things-eye-surgery center in Portland. “Best Place to Work in Maine,” the sign in the lobby said, and even though it was still blurry, I knew why. It was the happiest place this side of Disney World, where people like me came to see like they were kids again. Swarms of ’em. “We’re a well-oiled machine,” the staff agreed when I marveled at how efficiently they processed patients. More like a magical metamorphosis machine, I thought, with a steady stream of silver-haired, squinty folks coming in the front like stoic army ants, then out the back with huge “mission accomplished” grins ‘neath their bug-eyed “I just had eye surgery” sunglass shields, to return a week later, barefaced butterflies beholding their new world view.

“After this, it’s gonna be more beautiful than ever for you up in Rangeley,” my intake nurse said when I arrived for surgery. The entire staff knew exactly where I lived, why I needed a different post office address in Oquossoc, and how to pronounce both, which comforted me almost as much as the pre-op IV they promised would make me feel okay about the cutting tools they were about to put in my eye. “Yeah, I’m out on Mooselook,” I told one OR nurse. “Meguntic,” another one chimed in. And I knew I was in really good hands.

Then voilà! There I was, heading back up the mountain the next day, a brand new Clarion Vivity Toric UV intraocular lens, or IOL, implanted in my right eye, looking forward to getting my left eye matched up in two weeks. Until then, I had one good eye on the Technicolor road to Oz, and one bad eye still stuck in dusty ol’ Kansas. But the good eye was so very, very good, I barely noticed. “Wow…look, snow flurries,” Tom said as we came up over the Height of Land. As expected, my right eye felt like Angel Falls at spring break-up. But despite the gritty, gushing waterworks ‘neath my post-surgery sunglass shield, I was able to look. Like never before. And even though Tom had just uttered the “S” and the “F” words so early in November, I saw the loveliest, pearliest, whitest snow flurries dusting the evergreens, the turf browns, the late autumn auburns, and the granite greys all the way down to the bluest blues of my mountain lake home.

“Was it always this blue?” I started asking over and over. I figured I was missing some hue definition and clarity. But I had no idea I’d been blind to an entire spectrum of watercolors, of sky blues, mountaintop blues, and every other shade of Bemis shoreline blue. By the time I got home, I sounded like an oddly upbeat local R&B artist warbling on and on about the bluu-wooo-wooo-a-wooo-ooo’s. Imagine Bob Dylan getting enthusiastically tangled up in them, or Billie Holiday becoming a super happy, albeit off-key, lady singing ’em, and that’d be me.

My world hasn’t been this colorful since I replaced my basic box of school-issued crayons with the biggest box of brand-new Crayolas I could afford with my allowance! And I haven’t seen such an immediate return on any investment since. “Don’t cheap it out, Mom, it’s your eyes,” my daughters advised when I explained my lens replacement options and associated costs for anything above standard. I figured I didn’t need the super spendy, still experimental option for potentially becoming eagle-eyed everywhere all the time. But I didn’t want to settle for the refundable government-issued option either. So, as promised, I stretched my self-worth and out-of-pocket pocketbook a bit beyond standard up toward spectacular, paid for a heaping dose of well-being on top of what Medicare deemed medically necessary, and got my football-shaped, myopic eyeballs fitted with custom, crystal-clear, crystalline IOLs just this side of bionic. For less than what I spend on my mud season vacation, I gave myself a lifelong sightseeing staycation!

Then I spent a whopping $8 on two pairs of shiny red reading glasses I leave around the house, just in case I need to read something smaller than my arm can reach. Yup, the whole not being able to read stuff close up arm maneuver I thought was counter-intuitive, I get it now. Right under my nose no longer automatically equals clearer, and I’ve joined the Where the Heck Are My Reading Glasses Club. At least now I can see far and wide enough to find ’em, though.

“Wow, I always thought that was maroon,” I said the first time I saw my dining room tablecloth through fresh eyes. “It’s really somewhere between garnet and vermillion.” My tropical colors mixed with splashes of reds and shades of provincial blues and greens interior decorating scheme had always been sort of Rangeley meets Key West. But I had no idea I lived in a custom Crayola palette of wild watermelon, atomic tangerine, robin’s egg, shamrock, and all shades in between.

I was experiencing what the cataract crew called the “wow factor”—a kaleidoscopic rush of the highest definition brightest brights and whitest whites in recent memory. My clothes popped, my cabin walls glowed a rich, honey gold, my beloved birch trees stood iridescent. And no more dreaming of a white Christmas, I was living it already in sparkling splendor. But, also wow, was some not-so-shiny stuff I started spotting in my periphery, the darker, dingier side of 20/20 after decades of telling myself my house looked clean enough. Like all the windows I’d pronounced okay this year so I could ride my bike nonstop during optimal fall cleaning days. Wow, was I wrong! Because ya know what else is white besides snow and birch trees? Fingerprints on glass. Last winter’s dust backlit by this winter’s sun. Ashes on cobalt, AKA Rangeley mountain blue, woodstove tiles. Beagle belly fur mixed with cottony balls of Maine coon cat fur. My own fur! Turns out the hair color I saw in the mirror had been a fake shade of cataract blonde, and I was, in fact, an arctic fox. And talk about mirrors! Suddenly seeing myself in all my wintery white-skinned glory as I step out of the shower is definitely a mixed blessing.

It’s been a big adjustment for sure, graduating from worn-out monochrome technology to high-def 4K rez. For a week or so, my brain was recalculating more than a new GPS app with the “avoid dirt roads” option turned on. Thankfully, though, I’m dialed in now, recalibrated, my knack for seeing good in all things hardwired for success. I can look beyond whatever smudge accumulated from another year in my forever home, out at my beloved birch trees and the chickadees I used to think were eye floaters. I can smile barefaced in every mirror, glad to be reflecting back, to see and still be seen, at peace with the antique parts that can be fixed and the steady performance of those that can’t. I can enjoy my best-lit Christmas in years, blessed with the eyes of a child filled with Christmas morning wonder again in the winter of my life. Thanks to tomorrow’s eyecare today, I’ve left dusty ol’ Kansas behind for a new life in balsam-lined Emerald City. And the way I see it, even the dark season out here, also known as the Big Grey Bucket of Suck, is gonna be at least fifty shades better this year, filled with pewter, slate, and plenty of festive field mouse greys.

Fresh amazement

Joy Clough1 Comment

Forgetting is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, forgetting things like when my out-of-town guests are showing up or where my next turn is in one-way city traffic can be problematic. But temporarily forgetting how far I’ve come and what it has taken for me to get here? That’s fine. As long as I remember to remember. Because when I do, and do it right, it’s a special kind of magic. It’s fresh amazement.

Fresh amazement. Sure sounds good, right? And you know what? It feels even better, way better than worrying whether I’m just a dunderhead.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my thinking. Or, as Nana used to say, “lack thereof.” Unlike poor Nana, I’m not wrapping up empty boxes with Christmas paper or waiting for the streetcar to take me back to Malden. And I’m glad to report that I aced my annual wellness exam brain teaser like a trooper. “Apple, monkey, table!” I proudly parroted back at the nurse—–proof I can retain random words while doodling a clock face with big and little hands in the right places, then walk across the room, and touch my toes—–and, therefore, am not currently exhibiting cognitive shortcomings, hereditary or otherwise. So no worries about drawing a complete blank or going Nana flakey anytime soon, which left me not so much questioning my brain’s working capacity as I was its working order. As in why, with so many mundane details in there front and center, do I have to try so hard to keep hauling the monumental ones out of the archives?

Why do I need constant reminders of hard-won progress? How is it that I can readily recall what I wore, said, ate, and sang along to on any particular day way back when, but need sticky notes and other props to keep the big stuff from falling through my cranial cracks? What’s the point of forgetting how good it feels to feel really good, then remembering, only to forget again?

These were the questions seeding the early stage of Rooted In Rangeley story germination—-where I don’t know what I’m trying to say but I do know there’s something potentially profound planting itself in the ethereal mumbo jumbo of my inner ramblings. Something New Age-y that still made good sense. Something both thought and laughter provoking. Something may be of value to others beyond myself.

Searching for answers, I took a psychoanalytical deep dive into reasons why the human brain, mine in particular, keeps handy what it needs for any given moment and stores the rest for retrieval and reuse. I read about recency bias, adaptive forgetting, and other innate tricks it uses to keep me safe, sane, and not whirling out of control like some backwoods R2-D2. Nothing really struck me, though, until I came across this pearly nugget: “Of course you can’t remember everything, every feeling you had about every single day. If you did, you’d spend each waking moment in an endless cycle of reliving the past with no focus or scope for the present. You’d have no relativity, no room for retrospection, no reawakened emotions. What fun would that be? You’d have no fresh amazement.”

Bingo! There it was. Amid my Psychology Today meets the Tao Te Ching search for share-worthy stuff, a nifty little word combo so spot-on it took whatever the heck I was aiming for and nailed it perfectly. Fresh amazement.

Fresh amazement is the upside to temporarily forgetting past hurdles to throw my energy at new ones. It’s why it’s OK, I’ve decided, to keep glancing over my shoulder and shoot for the next brightest spot on the horizon as soon as I emerge from the shadows. It’s a fleeting state of renewed awe and appreciation, a glass-half-full zone worth every prompt and reminder it takes for me to always return there. And lately, it’s why I have an unused pair of walking canes hanging up in my home like prized 3-D art curios.

“Sayonara, suckers!” I told the clunky “assistive device” canes, super stoked to be swapping them out for a new pair of sleek, portable hiking poles. But instead of putting the rehab grade, tripod-tipped set back under the bed or up in the attic, I left them hanging out in plain view. Because while I might not need to use the old poles, I very much need to see them. Every day. As I’m grabbing my “everyday” ones and heading out and around. As I’m remembering to feel fresh amazement with every step.

When I retired the ol’ clunkers earlier this summer, I promised myself—-for the second time in a row—-if I was able to walk again “like normal” I’d never ever take it for granted. Like normal, you see, means getting where I want to go using one, sometimes two, walking sticks with occasional, sometimes epic, trips along the way if I don’t pick my feet up and start shuffling. In my case, it means powering through being born with mild cerebral palsy, then growing old with whatever wear and tear gets factored in along the way. It means finding balance, literally, between allowing myself to atrophy and pushing myself to exhaustion and more injury. Most importantly, it means remembering to pat myself on the back when it feels easier to just badger myself.

And that last part, the remembering the right way part, is almost as hard as putting one foot solidly in front of the other. “Remember when you could do power aerobics or ride a regular mountain bike in skimpy Spandex and high-top Reeboks? That was awesome!” I’m apt to tell myself with Chris Farley wistfulness and a vision of my 30-year-old self prancing around in my head. But that never leads to a good place. Reminiscing about my all-time personal best as I’m slipping into my comfy workout/wind pants and Dr. Comfort sneakers to go for an e-trike ride or a slow but steady walkabout does not bring fresh amazement but, actually, quite the opposite. I can get stuck in a state of stale indifference or, worse, rotten dejection. That’s when I need to bring my comparisons into the not-so-distant past, away from the leanest, sturdiest, most badass me, back to the still going pretty strong at almost 70 me—-who’s way better than she has been recently. That’s when I re-amaze myself. And that’s where props come in handy.

One long, mindful look at my clunker canes hanging by the door—-or at the empty corners of every room where I used to park Rosie (my bright red, all-terrain rolling walker)—and I recall just how badly I needed them and how desperately I had to muckle on, afraid I was getting closer to a wheelchair with each step. I remember the sadness of having my legs betraying me, of my mind losing control over my muscles, the pain in my old, achy hip, and my tired, bewildered spirit, the relief of finally getting the right kind of professional help, and daring to believe I might get better. I can see myself walking out of Maine Medical with a brand new Wonder Woman hip and, more recently, learning how to walk again after a nasty drug—-meant to calm my restless legs at night—-backfired, turning me into an anxious, clumsy rag doll unable to do so on my own. I feel myself recovering, twice in a row, and the superhuman sensations of the pain subsiding, the struggle easing—-of picking my head up, planting both feet, and getting back to being my old self.

I didn’t have such poetic words for it at the time but, man, when I was able to get back down to my lakefront without Rosie or the clunkers, using just my own steam and my everyday hiking poles, that was a whole new level of awesome! Has been ever since. As long as I watch my feet and the sleek red poles keeping ’em steady—and I remember to remember when that didn’t seem possible—my focus realigns and my path opens as wide as the Big Lake in my front yard the first time I took it all in again.

“Watch where your feet are going,” I’ve been told my whole life, advice I’d never thought I could put to positive use. Mostly because it came right after I stumbled and, often, right before I walked into a tree or a wall trying to watch where my feet are going. So it wasn’t the sort of advice that made me feel newly marvelous. But now that I’ve watched my feet and legs come close to going nowhere without a lot of help, I’ve found the right context, the right way to remind myself to watch, compare, and realize that this and all blessings are fleeting. I feel joy in every moment of moving forward in my own special way. I feel fresh amazement.

And while walking wonder is such a go-to source, being right in front of me and all, it turns out that fresh amazement is, actually, all around me. I just have to keep my mind and eyes open, keep finding my own answers to the old question: Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone? Yes. But if you’re lucky you get some of it back and, when you do, you know enough to hang on to it hard because it could be gone again in a second. There’s no app for that, no customizable pop-up to spark that kind of mental clarity. That’s OK, though, I never have to look too far for more prompters.

“Wow, remember COVID,” I say to myself every time I see the stack of masks, unused test kits, and the tiny, go-anywhere clip-on bottles of hand sanitizer in the corner of my cupboard. “Remember how wonderful it felt when you stashed this stuff away because you were able to start going places again without being scared you might die?” Yup, sure do. And if that doesn’t fill me with fresh amazement, there’s plenty of other cues close-by: All the half-full bottles of awful prescriptions I’ve stopped taking for good. The pile of bigger girl pants gathering dust. The ancient dog bed where our fifth “best beagle ever” sleeps by my side. The useful space on my countertop, in my fridge, and in my life, now that I’ve given up drinking once and for all. The luggage I’m happy to unpack when I return to my home sweet home that stays right where I can grab it for my next adventure. And then there’s always the calendar, and the yin-yang Rangeley weather to stir my awe and appreciation.

“I’m gonna really try to remember this in January,” I said the other day as I basked in the balmy, bright, calm, bugless September air. Moments earlier, I’d been wondering why I couldn’t have weather like that in July and August, how long it would last, why the leaves seemed to be piling up on the deck faster than usual, and blah, blah, blah. Then one of those “this was how things were for you a year ago” type of Facebook flashbacks came on my screen, showing a sleet-covered path down to my grey lake, and me out there in my Elmer Fudd hat and serious jacket already. Outside my real window screen, however, summer was still waiting in all its fleeting glory. So I grabbed my poles, smiled at the ol’ clunker canes on my way out the door, and savored the fresh amazement.