Nearsighted

I remember 14 Years Old

I remember my mother's long arms, taking care of the plants that grew from every corner of our house. Her arms were vines with a rag and a spray bottle blooming from each hand. I don’t remember my mother’s hands ever being empty. Isn’t that odd? She was always holding something. A spatula. A mop. My lost glasses. A small spade. She loved planting and replanting flowers and plants from small pots to large pots. She was a first-rate gardener. Every room was teeming with healthy vegetation. She would wet their leaves, feed them, shuffle them either closer or farther away from the sun. Plants that were green or pink or red. Plants that were always alive. Plants that thrived. Other than the temperature, it was difficult to see the difference between her garden outside and the garden inside. The windows were open to the summer gloss. The only things missing were the birds flying from branch to branch, and I think she would have let the birds inside, too. But my father put his foot down. My father put his foot down only so often. Mostly, he was the enforcer of my mom's rules.

“Alysa, can you try to remember to use a coaster when you take a drink into the living room?” My father was a proxy for my mom who could never bring herself to correct me. He became her spokesperson when it came to discipline. How many times had I ignored the coaster rule? I was actually breaking two rules: no food in the living room and the coaster covenant. The coaster rule was her acknowledgment that I was breaking the no food rule. (Is a drink “food” mom?) Obviously, I was a difficult child. Such simple rules that I found so easy to break. Breaking rules and her heart for as long as I can remember.

The truth is that I could have followed every single rule, and it would have meant no less work for her. I could have disappeared forever, and she would still clean every day. She wasn’t “picking up after me;” she was just being herself. She marched through the stations of the house, and she did the work. She moved the fat potted plants and swept the floor and scrubbed the walls. She cleaned as she cooked. A trip to the bathroom was always more than just a call from nature. It was a chance to clean. The sun visited her and filled the seats of the sofa, highlighting the swirling particles of dirt in the air. She had the vacuum cleaners out before the dust had a chance to float quietly towards the floor. She had multiple vacuum cleaners, all in different sizes with different purposes. Each one of them sucked the evidence of my existence from the surfaces of our world. There probably was a picture in her head of the house at its most perfect state. Everything felt brand new. Like it just came out of the box. Growing up I saw my mother as a servant to her own sense of order. I knew it was not how I wanted to be, but I had no choice but to live inside this vision of hers, perfected in her mind.

I was happy to be nearsighted in her house. Most kids moaned when I told them I was wearing glasses as a baby, but it gave me this delicious excuse to ignore the things she ached for me to see. I left my glasses everywhere. She bought me more than one pair and would hide them throughout the house. I knew she had a pair hidden somewhere in the kitchen just in case I lost them all. I enjoyed my poor eyesight because I had a mother who was a white cane and a service dog and a Braille copy of Hamlet all wrapped up into one. There's nothing from my childhood that I enjoyed more than being “looked after” by her. I got around. I could find the toilet. I could sit close enough to the TV to watch Spongebob. I could see from the corners of my ailing eyes. I shrugged off my mother's warnings because how much worse could my eyesight get? (Sadly, it did get worse.)

“Howard, tell Alyssa it’s a bad idea to keep looking at everything so close.”

“Just wear your glasses, Lulu.” My dad understood us both. He was a wonderful translator who spoke both my language and hers. How he put up with us is beyond me.

“Come again? What did you say?”

“Very funny. One disability at a time, darling.” He smirked.

She had one hand on her hip while she shook the Swiffer duster. Even with my horrible eyesight, I could see that tableau. It was her nonverbal way of saying, “I’ve had just about enough of you for one day.” She came to that conclusion by the end of every day, often before the sun went down, but she never said a word to me. She didn’t have to.

She was better than clockwork. If a clock had its own clock, that’s how she ran things. She was obvious. She was predictable. I used to think she was a little crazy, but much later in my life I realized she was this way because of me.

“Where are my red glasses?” I asked her when she was emptying the recycling. I would throw her a bone every now and then. I knew she would know where they were, but I also knew that she knew that I knew where they were. She always knew what I knew. It was a complicated little comedy routine we performed.

“Right there on the coffee table, Lulu.” My father pointed. She paused, contemplating.

“On a coaster,” she said. My father smiled. I did, too, even though I tried not to.

She did not smile.

“Oh, yeah. Right where I left them.” I put them on and grinned, ”for a minute there I thought we were going to have to crack open the vacuum cleaners. They could have sucked them right up!” I laughed loudly like someone trying to start a lawnmower. He kept smiling, and she went back to dusting anything and everything. It was a good excuse for turning her back on both of us.

“Oh, Lulu. At least they would be CLEAN.” He turned to his wife, “Right, Gerty?” He put his arms around his wife and whispered, “I sure could use some dusting, hon.” He kissed her cheek, but she wouldn’t stop dusting and re-dusting the same things. Her hand left her hip and there was a pause like someone about to leap off a cliff. She pantomimed Swiffer dusting his head. At the time, I hated that kissy, lovey crap, but much later I realized how rare that sort of love is.

One day I remember him coming to me while I was listening to music in my room. “Lulu, your mother is going to run up to the produce stand to pick up some stuff for dinner. Would you like to join her?” He bopped his head to the song I was playing. “C’mon, Alyssa. I hate shopping with her. Do me this favor. She needs a cart pusher.” He laughed. “And I’ve got this old war injury…” He rubbed his knee.

“Dad, you were never in a war.”

“Living in this house feels like a war. The way you two get along. It’s enough to give a man PTSD.” He trembled. “Lulu, do me this one favor, and I’ll buy you an ice cream.

“I hate ice cream.”

“Exactly.” He smiled. He was always charming to everyone. I was no exception.

“Do I have to wear my glasses?” That was not really a question but rather the announcement that I had no desire to see any part of this trip. “Deal?”

He stepped in to shake my hand. His foot got caught up in the clothes spread out on the floor. “You need your glasses in this room, but I don’t blame you for not wanting to see this mess!” He mocked falling down. Oh, how much I miss him. “You know….” Uh oh. Nothing good ever came after my Dad’s infamous ‘you know.’ “Your mom would prefer you wore them all the time, Lulu-bear.”

He was going for the throat punch. ‘Lulu-bear’ was as old a nickname as my first pair of glasses (which my mother kept in her jewelry box).

Back then, my exact kind of blindness didn’t bother me that much. The rituals created by my mother kept me from stumbling or tripping over things because everything was exactly where it should be. In the car I didn't need to see where we were going. At school I always used a magnifying glass and the knowledge that pity was a great way to avoid failing. You can’t fail the little crippled girl, right?

For most of my childhood, I didn't need to see. For most of my childhood, I didn’t need to see her. In my head she was a giant Ficus tree that was potted in a dark corner of our home. She would bend this way or that, but she was always there.

I never saw her run or even move in a way that was unexpected. Everywhere we went she was always there, pinned to a point, moving easily from one worn spot to the next. If we went to the beach, she wore the same bathing suit, straw hat, bag of beach stuff (with a spare pair of prescription sunglasses). She had my dad plant the umbrella and open the chairs in the same spot every year. If we went to an amusement park, she always seemed nailed to some bench near the exit of each ride. And when we had to walk, she always took the exact same footpath.

I felt like her warnings to me through my Dad was a trellis that would stretch from wherever she was to wherever I was going. She wanted to force me to grow straight because she wanted to make sure that I would become the woman who could see without seeing.

“Yeah, I’ll ride along.” I took my glasses off and walked to the door that leads to the garage. I picked the keys from the second hook and replaced them with my discarded glasses. I didn’t need to see her look of disappointment. “I’ll drive.”

“You’re just full of surprises today, aren’t you?” He took the keys from me. “Hit the garage door.” It was inside the garage. I had been opening that garage door since I could reach it. Click! And then the garage door slowly opens its own eye. I hear the “BEEP BEEP” of the car locks being released, and I jump into the back seat of our Volvo wagon.

“To the veggie stand!” I pointed. She sighed and got into the car. My dad motioned for me to roll down the window.

“Wear these, please.” He handed me the red glasses. “And the veggie stand is THAT way.” He moved my hand so I was pointing south instead of north.

"How was I supposed to know?"

He reached into the car, and lovingly picked up my chin so that we were eye to eye. “Wear them for me, Alyssa.” He winked, “for me?”

My mother looked at me sideways. I didn’t have to ask why.

“Alyssa," she seemed to whisper. "get out of the car.” A little louder.

“What?” I lost my breath for a moment.

“What?” My dad did his little chuckle, but instead of charming he sounded old.

“Get out of the car, NOW.” She was yelling at the steering wheel, not looking at me at all. Her face was the color of a Red Velvet plant. “I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to be your chauffeur or your jailer or your punching bag!” She nearly lost it at the end. If she opened her mouth one more time it would be to bite me. She finally turned around and gave me a look. I might have been able to understand it if I had my glasses on.

Well, you didn’t have to say it twice (even though she did). I got out of the car. “Screw this.’ I went to slam the door, but I stumbled backwards and fell into the car. I couldn’t catch myself. I was on the ground. 14 years old, and I couldn’t slam a door properly. Poor little crippled girl.

My Dad lifted me up. Once I was standing, he opened my glasses and slid them onto my face.

“No way, pops.” I went to take them off, and he stopped me and pushed the bridge back up my nose.

“You’re wearing them.”

My mother started the car. ‘Get in or get out of the way’ was the not so subtle message.

“Whatever!" I looked at my dad for support," goddamn crazy!”

I turned to walk away, but my father stood and blocked me. I looked up at his face. He was rough but good looking. Like a Marlboro man or a movie star. “Get in the car, Lulu.” I tried to walk past him, but he was not budging. The look on his face was determined, bordering on angry. It hit me at the time that I could see his face because I was wearing my glasses - thanks to him.

He opened the front passenger door and waited.

“Dad!”

“Get in.” So I did what he said.

He leaned into me with the door open. “And if you take those glasses off, I’m going to make you eat a gallon of ice cream. You hear?” He smirked and I smiled despite myself. He quietly closed the door.

It was the last time I would ever see him alive, even with my glasses on. He suffered a stroke when were gone. He died on the living room floor.

I remember only patches of coming home from the veggie stand. Of course, it was a horrible experience. I saw him on the floor, blue and stiff. I realized that again I could only see him because I was wearing my glasses. But I couldn’t take them off. It was the last thing he asked of me. Never again would I fight her about that. In fact, we didn’t fight anymore. After him. Even with my glasses on, our world got very dark.

Today, 44 Years Old

Sitting in the back of a hundreds mobility cars, I often look up and half expect to see the green leaves of my mother's hands gripping the steering wheel, carefully guiding me through the city. It’s not her eyes that I miss the most. The darkness was always another parent to me. No. It's the long flat leaves of her dark green arms that filled the corners of my bedroom, leaking oxygen and love into my lungs. Always watered. Always pruned. The plants of my childhood home were always eager to grow and beautiful to see.

Tonight, it’s her funeral that I am attending. She made a world for me where I could navigate my own stubbornness. We both lost sight of things without him there. Silence was easier than fighting. Silence took his place at the dinner table.

I tried to remember what we said the last time I spoke to my mom. It was crazy that I couldn’t remember even though we spoke weekly. The two of us chatted like we were reading braille, quietly passing our fingers over the endless bumps. Now the dark is no longer a choice. It was once an escape, but now it’s just time passing.

She saw for me. She saw me. And I knew that no matter what happened, she had an extra pair of my coke-bottle glasses somewhere in her purse. All I ever had to do was ask.

I shuffled down the three steps with my white cane. The MTA shuttle bus was waiting for me, filled with the other blind riders. I stepped into the sunshine and climbed the narrow steps of the mini-bus. I couldn’t see the beautiful summer day, but I felt it just like I felt her making room for me, protecting me, watching me from heaven. The sun was my mother, watching me glide to the back of the bus where I leaned my head on the glass and imagined it was her driving me to the funeral home. The sun on my face was her voiceless way of reminding me how much I was loved.