I can see clearly now the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind. It’s gonna be a bright (bright) Bright (bright) sunshiny day.

Jimmy Cliff, I Can See Clearly Now

As I was getting ready to take a bath, the door suddenly opened, and without knocking, in walked my little sister…not an uncommon occurrence in my family. There’s not a lot of privacy with two younger sisters. I had already taken off my top and snaked off my slacks as well. While water filled the tub, I stood waiting in my panties and brand-new training bra.

Interesting concept that…an instructional undergarment. I never truly understood the function of a training bra. Training for what? But I digress and that of course is a discussion for another day.

Penny hesitated momentarily at the door with her mouth agape, shocked by the sight of her older sister sporting a brassiere. She quickly exited down the hall in the direction of our mother, pausing only long enough to shout back at me, “I’m telling Mom you’re wearing a breer!” Slipping into the bathwater I smiled. Yes, I was proudly wearing a “breer” and taking another step toward coming of age.

Don’t we all share similar milestones along our life’s journey? Losing a tooth, learning to drive, graduating from high school, the first job, marriage, children, grandchildren, all leading sooner than we imagined to retirement and Social Security. Cataract surgery, too, I now recognize as a senior citizen rite of passage.

During the past month I checked that off my list. Whoo! Hoo!

The local experts specializing in cataracts have refined the experience to a smoothly functioning assembly line…timed, efficient, and every detail carefully thought out, planned, and practiced. Throughout the entire process…start to finish…I probably saw my surgeon for less than an hour…including the procedure itself…as he moved from patient to patient, eye to eye. He was friendly, proficient, highly skilled…and he looked like he was about 20 years old. On the other hand, as I sat with my fellow patients waiting for our pupils to dilate, it was very evident that we all grew up with Howdy Doody, watched the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, learned to drive on a standard transmission, and remembered when kids played outside until the streetlights came on. None of us could remember getting old so quickly. By the way, if for any reason, you should ever need to find a collection of senior citizens, the waiting room of a cataract surgeon hits the jackpot!

Over the years, I’ve asked many people what they recall about getting their first pair of glasses. Most told me that they were amazed to realize that there were leaves on the trees…not just a mass of greenery, but individual leaves! Of course, they knew theoretically that there were leaves, but until they got glasses, the leaves remained an amorphous green cloud floating above a solid grey trunk. The removal of my cataracts provided a similar experience. Within a couple of hours of the surgery for my first eye, I was amazed at the clarity, brightness, and color of the world around me. I felt like I was going from an old model television to high definition. When I tried to explain this phenomenon to my granddaughter, who has only known HDTV, she said, “Oh, You mean, like when you get a new iPhone”? Yes, that’s it! That’s it exactly.

I had to wait four weeks before I could get my second eye repaired. Even with one very good eye, I was still finding it difficult to read. My frustration with reading prompted me to proceed with the surgical option in the first place. I struggled to read the required texts for my class, and if I couldn’t get my book club pick in large print, it was a nightmare. As the scheduled date for my second eye approached, I began to wonder. What if it isn’t my eyes that are making reading difficult? What if I’m losing my ability to concentrate? What if I’m just not a reader anymore? What if? What if?”

Surgery for the second eye was scheduled for Wednesday morning at 8:25. A few days later, I found myself lost in the pages of a book. By Tuesday afternoon the following week…a mere six days later… I had finished a book of 566 pages! Granted, this was a book I was highly motivated to read, but it proved that I could still enjoy reading!

I was back!

I was overjoyed at my ability to find pleasure in reading again, but what really surprised me was how quickly I forgot how challenging my sight had been before the surgery. I am already accepting clear vision as a matter of course. Unless I get a smudge on the lenses of my glasses, I forget how difficult it had been to see.

“For now we see through a glass, darkly;

I Corinthians 13:12 KJV

Our brains are so amazing that unless we really focus on an experience and try to hold on to the memory the present pushes it to the back of our minds. The beauty of a summer day, the smile of a grandchild, or the taste of a ripe strawberry will easily supersede the pain of negative experience, and while not truly forgotten it is nevertheless dulled and diminished…at least for a time…allowing us to enjoy the blessings of life that remain. Once the bad haircut grows out it is forgotten.

It has been a little more than a year since I wrote a blog post about what I thought it might be like coming out of the pandemic. I imagined that we were all standing on the threshold, moving from before to after. Of course, at the time, none of us could have envisioned just how vast that threshold was. We knew there would be a time after the pandemic, but it was as nebulous as the leaves on the trees pre-glasses.

As more of us are vaccinated and can once again gather in person, I find that it is becoming difficult to remember how painfully lonely I was for months on end as we avoided one another and kept each other safe by social distancing and self-isolating.

The weekly Zoom calls that provided at least a modicum of human interaction during the dark winter months are slowly being discontinued in favor of tentative in-person connections. Mask mandates are being relaxed and I’m finding that lipstick is once again part of my beauty routine. Our lives are quickly falling into a pattern that is comfortable and familiar. We can’t say we’re back, but we’re definitely on the way.

I don’t ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depth of my seeing.

Mary Oliver

I am no longer worried that I may die from this dreadful infection, but I am worried that we…I…may forget the lessons learned about the value of human connection, human touch, and what’s really important. Rather than seeing the pandemic as the tree with undefined leaves, I might gather those truths that rest among the first leaves of Spring like the blossoms and press them to my heart instead of between sheets of waxed paper. This time of COVID has been painful, frightening, frustrating, and dangerous, but it also revealed a great deal of beauty in the way people supported one another with love, understanding, and kindness. Perhaps, as we emerge, we could remind each other of the blessings and gifts of grace this unique time has given us. Together we might be the people we hoped we’d be…the people we were meant to be.