Carol Kirkpatrick, possibly the brightest writer I ever met in a writing group (proof positive being her ability to scribble out a pithy, brilliantly crafted story on the spot) had the additional charm of treating me to an oral history of Brooklyn whenever we walked its streets together. Combining warmth, depth, humor, and subtlety well into her 90s, she will always represent perfectly what I’d like to be when I grow up. My hope is to charm you with this sample of her writing:
The Curse
Until I was 12 I could see pretty well. Then things started to get fuzzy.
I faked for a while. Then, at my 7th grade physical, my cover was blown. Glasses!
How I hated them! I destroyed them in ascendingly creative ways. At first I simply left them home or lost them. I sat on them or “accidentally” stepped on them. Another pair got slammed in the car door.
One summer day I dived off a sailboat. The next day the glasses actually washed up on the beach, but the lenses, tumbled by the waves, were no longer transparent.
When I had to learn to drive for a new job I had to get new glasses. Amazing! I hadn’t known faces had expression.
Finally I overcame my phobias enough to get contacts. They were okay up to a point, but I kept forgetting and nodding off to sleep. They would roll into the farthest recesses of my brain. My friend Marilyn would have to come over and retrieve them.
When my 6-month old kept punching me in the face, I gave up on the contacts. (They were the hard kind in those days.)
For decades I lived behind glass, hating every minute of it. Then, horror of horros, I developed cataracts. I became blinder and blinder, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to undergo surgery.
When I finally went to an ophthalmologist surgeon she told me my cataracts were too far gone for a simple laser procedure. After much psychological prep I went under the knife. It was a slow recovery, but I came out with pretty good vision in the left eye.
It took a couple of years to work up the courage to go back for the right eye. This time I wasn’t so lucky. Removal of that over-ripe cataract was so difficult that the doctor couldn’t get the new lens in on the same surgery.
I’m taking my time. Though I can only see blurred images from my right eye, I can still see better than I’ve been able to since age 12. And I’m not living behind glass.
