Seeing Clearly, One More Time

 

The past 36 hours have showered me with miracle upon miracle. So much so, that I have already started not noticing them, and and taking them for granted.

In March of 2024 I underwent cataract surgery on both eyes. I recall being amazed and pleased by the improvements in my vision. I was glad it had all gone well, and was ready to put that milestone on my way through old age behind me.

Several months ago I began to notice some fuzziness or cloudiness in my vision. I figured it was dry eyes or something like that, and tried several kinds of eye drops to clear things up. But my vision continued to get worse, and I made an appointment with my optometrist. He told me that I has one of a significant number of post-cataract-surgery patients in which the membrane behind the new lenses clouds over. (It’s called Posterior Capsule Opacification, or PCO, I believe.) He said the problem was easily fixed with a quick laser treatment.

Monday morning—two days ago—I went to the Cleveland Eye Clinic, where my eyes were thoroughly examined for about an hour before I finally got the promised “YAG” laser treatment . It took all of about 30 seconds. Even though my eyes were dilated, I knew right away that my vision had underdone an astonishing improvement.

One of the things I was told in the preliminaries was that my eyesight was so compromised that I should not have been driving at night. It was scary to learn that. I knew I was having some difficulties with glare, but apparently I was more at risk of having an accident than I ever dared imagine. It was humbling to learn that what I thought I was doing well I was actually doing poorly.

Later yesterday and into today I have marveled at the colors and clarity of leaves and flowers, the brightness of my phone’s screen, the blackness of newsprint. I was missing so very much, and I did not really know it. By this evening, I fear I am beginning to get used to the newness, and not noticing it. I am fighting that feeling because I liked the excitement of seeing everything in a new way.

In some ways, the joy of this vast improvement surpasses what I felt after cataract surgery itself. That’s probably because I didn’t have to go through a slower recovery period. The change was instant. The only earlier experience I can fully compare it with was when I first got glasses when we I was 12 or 13 years old and suddenly stars actually were pinpricks of light and glowing embers were more than a red-orange blob. Maybe what happened to me Monday took me back to a youthfulness that is in fact far beyond my capturing.

My experience reminds me that blindness is not simply a total lack of vision, but can also be cloudy, imperfect vision. I was walking (and driving!) through my life thinking I was seeing clearly, but I was wrong. It took a laser strike to bring me back to my senses (so to speak) and to realize not only what I had been missing but also to look carefully at everything I could now look at again and see anew.

I think a lot around us encourages us to perceive our surroundings through clouded eyes. It even tries to provide the cloud. I am troubled by those who do not seem to see things as clearly as I do. But then I wonder how clearly I see things. I try hard to learn about things that matter to me, to respect facts and truth, to speak what makes reasoned sense to me based upon my experience and knowledge. And then one day I am shocked to learn I may be a danger to myself and to others, a shock that should cause me to try harder to see things, including myself, for what they really are. Doing this is a life-long journey of discovery and reflection. I hope I never give in to any blindness I may realize I have and be content with just living with it.

Finally, I had never heard of PCO before I was diagnosed with it, which is surprising now that I’ve talked with so many people who’ve gone through the same thing. If you are reading this, and are experiencing a similar problem following cataract surgery, get it checked out. I’d love for you to enjoy the miracles I’ve enjoyed for the last day and a half.

And I am forever grateful.

Chaco Canyon Comment

In the summer of 2019, my wife and I spent a day visiting Chaco Canyon, guided by a woman from a museum in a nearby city. Although we have spent considerable time in America's desert southwest, it was our only visit to that particular site. I am no expert, and I have neither the patience nor the expertise to read and understand the hundreds of pages of technical material that has been assembled to defend the proposal to free a surrounding 10-mile zone so that minerals and oil may be extracted from that area. My comments will therefore not be of the type you are asking for.

I think the reason this and many other actions by the present administration to remove protected lands from protection troubles me is the noise that will result. Put another way, you are waring against quiet, against silence, against those places remaining on planet earth where a person can sit and listen and hear beyond nature's quiet and perhaps learn that there are things more important that money, development, and exploitation. Such listening to silence is a threat to a culture of wanting it all and being willing to do whatever it takes to get it all. Such contemplation may raise a question about what really matters to our generation as well as to generations that will follow us.

You know that places such as Chaco Canyon and its environs are held to be sacred by native peoples. I contend they are sacred to all Americans because they give us a chance to let ourselves think and feel for ourselves. I fear that that is exactly what many political leaders, particularly the current MAGA political leaders, do not want us to do. If we were free of the noise of mining and drilling and burning, not to mention of crass political ads and unending ads to trick us into buying ever more stuff, we might think about who we really are and how we really are one humanity living on one once-beautiful planet.

I am not a total romantic about all of this. Nature makes plenty of noise on its own, and it is hard to call everything that happens in nature beautiful. And we do need materials and energy in order to live. But when is enough enough, or even too much?

Sites like Chaco Canyon invite us to strip our conception of what we really need down to the bones. We need such places to save us from consuming ourselves to death. Please let it be as it is. We can afford to do that.

Family Stories

Maxine and I can trace our family histories—through our fathers—back to before July 4 was July 4, 1776.

Last weekend we detoured on our drive from Philadelphia back to Cleveland to visit family cemeteries. We began south of York, Pennsylvania, stopping at the late-18th century graves of some Myers’s who were my ancestors. The next day, in Pittsburgh, we visited Maxine’s parents’ and grandparents’ graves. They are much more recent, but we know that her Moorhead line also goes back to pre-Revolutionary days.

The Myers forebears, who settled in eastern Pennsylvania, were Swiss German; the Moorhead forbears, who settled in western Pennsylvania, were Scots-Irish. I guess they are all considered to be northern European immigrants.

Interestingly, both of our mothers were descendants of immigrants who came here as part of the great immigration wave of the late-19th century, mine from the Czech lands and Maxine’s from Wales. So her roots go back to the British Isles (though not to England itself), and my Swiss German heritage is supplemented with Slavic blood, as well as some Norwegian (from my paternal grandmother).

Of course, little of all that really matters or is definitive about anything. For example, based on their names, I assume that the women who married into the Myers family throughout the 19th century were also northern European, but it would take research that I have not attempted to find out.

The result is that we pass for white Americans wherever we go. Some call this “privilege,” by virtue of our ancestry, and I accept that. Accept it or not, we no doubt make the most of that privilege every day, usually unconsciously.

When I think of what I know about our family heritages, I can only conclude that we are remarkably unremarkable. We are today what we have always been, so deeply embedded in the American mainstream that you can hardly see us. I do not know of a single individual in either of our backgrounds who would qualify for a mere footnote in a history book, unless it was some extremely narrow or specialized history. History-changing soldiers, or inventors, or political leaders, or artists, or anyone else? Not on our family trees!

This is not to say our ancestors did not contribute to our nation’s progress. Our family stories are populated with people who worked hard at their jobs, who contributed to their communities and churches, who raised children into becoming good and responsible citizens. Some of us served our time in our armed forces, and I assume most of us voted. And I do take pride in the particular accomplishments of a few of us.

At the same time, I know of no one in either family who was bad enough to make the history books. The only “troublemaker” I have come across was a Revolutionary-era Myers who refused to pay taxes to the newly-founded United States of America because of his religious (Brethren) convictions, which recognized no human authority, whether royal or republican. I celebrate his adherence to his convictions! But for the most part, we are just folks, generation after generation after generation doing what we did for our own benefit as well as for the greater good of our neighbors and nation.

As far as I know, with the aforementioned exception, we’ve been true patriots, loyal to our country and to its ways and its freedoms. We are not families given to outward shows of emotion, so our patriotism has not always been obvious. It is just part of who we are. We don’t always need to talk about it.

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So it is as heir to the most ordinary of American stories that I claim that our story is not the only kind of story that is American and that must continue to be American. My roots are deep enough in the soil and soul of these United States that I can live in a garden with many different kinds of roots supporting many kinds of lives and life-styles. I believe in the values and vision that have, corny as it sounds, made us into, if not a melting pot, then a rich and fragrant stew of many kinds, colors, and consistencies of folks.

(Native Americans have a place in this “stew,” but it is distinctive because of their sovereignty.)

I want the America that my old immigrant forebears made our home to remain forever a potential home for new immigrants. And no, I am not for “open borders,” so don’t throw that at me! I am for immigration policies and practices that welcome others to live here, giving special attention to those fleeing from persecution and terror. Such welcome is what it is to be The United States of America. Standing up for it is what it is to be an American.

I suspect many of those from whom Maxine and I are descended would be perplexed by our current move toward what some call the “unitary executive,” by which the occupant of the White House would be able to wield nearly unlimited power over our country. I believe that the Myerses and Moorheads of 250 years ago would wonder why we would give up the rule of law and embrace rule by personal fiat. They would, I trust, be surprised by my “No Kings” sign. They might wonder what has gone wrong. Hadn’t they settled the question of “kings or no kings” in their time?

Let’s not disappoint them. Let’s not allow the tyranny that those early immigrants to America had thought they had put behind us to destroy our future as a free people. Let’s work together to continue to be the nation of immigrants we have been from our beginning.