Not So Rose-Colored Glasses

I’m not sure now if I was so much blessed with perfect vision as I was blessed with a mother who wouldn’t allow her children to have anything less than perfect vision. Regardless, I didn’t wear glasses until my mid-forties.

The way my self-delusion came crashing home is recounted in my story, “Dare to Enter” in the hilarious book, Your Glasses Are on Top of Your Head: Tales of Life, Longevity, and Laughter, now available.

The good news is I have developed such a smooth routine with my glasses that I no longer give them—or my aging vision—a second thought. That is, until the other day when I pulled them from their customary storage place (the unused cup holder), put them on...and they just didn’t improve my vision any. As in at all.

My doctor always asks me if I’ve experienced any sudden vision changes. I’d never given it much thought before, but now I did. What do sudden vision changes mean? I ran down the whole list—at least the list within my knowledge. Diabetes? Glaucoma? Retinal detachment? Probably a whole bunch of other horrible ones I don't even know about! My breathing grew more rapid with each one.

I’m Facebook friends with a woman who seems to have all sorts of weird medical disasters befalling her. One of them was when she experienced sudden detachment of her retinas. The way she told it, she was just hanging out and her retinas suddenly decided to depart, introducing for me the alarming possibility that body parts can just randomly flee. She always describes all of her health issues in detail, complete with pictures. It seems to me she was left in the hospital for the longest time, suspended facedown and immobile, in order to help preserve her vision.

It was so horrifying, hundreds of people “liked” it.

So I started to panic there in my car. I can’t afford a night in the hospital, let alone weeks! And dangling face-down! What would I do?! And worse—my vision was not only blurred, but dimmed! What did dimmed vision mean? I thought of movies where dying people coughed and whispered melodramatically, “It’s…it’s getting dark.” It was almost like….

Oh. I said it aloud in my car because I also talk to myself these days. Then I started laughing—something I’m afraid I also do by myself sometimes these days. Sunglasses, is what it was like. Non-prescription ones. The ones I’d accidentally put into my cupholder where the driving glasses go. So technically the glasses were on my face and everything, but they were just the wrong ones.

Who knew old age was so entertaining? Don’t forget: Your Glasses Are on Top of Your Head, edited by Brenda Elsagher. You might even find yourself randomly laughing for a long time afterward.

I learned at fifty I had joined the army of unwanted men. ~Ray Brandbury, Farewell Summer

Improper Poll: Summer on a Shelf

Val the Victorian recently mentioned the books we read every summer. This, and Ray Bradbury’s recent death, reminded me I haven’t recently read the book that is to me the consummate book of summer, Dandelion Wine. In fact, it’s quite possibly my all-time favorite book. What’s odd is that I can never remember exactly what it’s about—just the feeling it gives me, the taste of it. Each time, I get something new. To me that book is as magical as summer itself.

I had no idea there was a film in the making until I looked for pictures. A movie could be wonderful, but the true beauty of this book is in the poetic writing.

The dandelion wine is truly a taste of bottled summer, “…the balm of sun and idle August afternoons, the faintly heard sounds of ice wagons passing on brick avenues, the rush of silver skyrockets and the fountaining of lawn mowers moving through ant countries, all these, all these in a glass.”

The yearly dandelion wine is “summer caught and stoppered” to be put on shelves “…row upon row, with the soft gleam of flowers opened at morning, with the light of this June sun glowing through a faint skin of dust” so that in the winter, “…snow melted to grass, the trees were reinhabitated with bird, leaf, and blossoms like a continent of butterflies breathing on the wind.”

Alas, the book was over far too quickly.  I might just take it out again in winter. To be read in little sips. What’s your favorite summer read?

Hello Computer, Goodbye Ray Bradbury

 It’s good to be back after a long absence with a broken computer. Now I’m back at last…only to find out that one of my all-time favorite writers ever, Ray Bradbury, died this week.

I’m not sure exactly when I fell in love with his unique style—that unlikely combination of horror and lilting poetry that sings to my soul. I think I read Fahrenheit 451 in high school. Excerpts from The Martian Chronicles inevitably end up in high school anthologies, so I think that’s where my feelings began to deepen. But I believe it was after Something Wicked This Way Comes that it became pure love.

The one that reads to me like sips of a precious elixir to the spirit is Dandelion Wine. I rocked in the nursery rocking chair and read it to my abdomen after I found out that the fetus therein was male. To this day it remains one of my all-time favorite books and proof to me of what I once read about Ray Bradbury to those of us who worshiped him: he was not really a science fiction writer, but a poet.

I relished each word of Zen in the Art of Writing. Then last Christmas, I got the most thoughtful gift of my life when a dear friend sent me an autographed copy of The Halloween Tree. It’s one of the few I don’t have. I was almost speechless.

“How did you know that’s something I’ve always wanted?” I asked. I’d never said.

I could hear his infamous shrug over the phone. “I don’t know. It just fit you.” Which is, of course, what I could say about all of Ray Bradbury’s work. I’m not sure why, but it fits me.

I read that Ray Bradbury died during the rare transit of Venus. I hope that’s true. I imagine he would have liked that.

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together. ~Ray Bradbury