When I think of my imperiled eyesight, I think of “pumpkin spice.”I’m obviously going to have to explain that.
It was around this time six years ago — the middle of October, peak pumpkin spice — when I woke up one morning with blurred vision, realized that a dappled fog had settled over my right eye and learned days later that a stroke of sorts had ravaged my right optic nerve. Its occurrence meant that my left optic nerve was also vulnerable — and could, like the other one, frazzle in an instant. I could go blind.
I remember it all so clearly. And I remember that during that first frightful week, amid an array of medical tests and a flurry of phone calls to friends and relatives, I had a column due.
I could skip it. I had a damned fine excuse. But I remember how important it seemed to me to forge forward, to prove to myself that I had the requisite strength, to make a statement about obligations that would still be met, about routines that wouldn’t change, about a competence that wasn’t diminished.
I had to increase the size of the characters on the computer screen. (I still do.) I had to work more slowly, more carefully. (Ditto.) But I got the column done. Here it is.
And to this day, it’s a favorite of mine. I reread it every October. But that’s not because it’s particularly well executed (though I think it’s sufficiently clever) but because it’s a before-and-after mile marker, the sign of a new stretch of highway, a roadside testament.
I pressed on from there and, as wise acquaintances of mine promised, the journey became easier. I stopped worrying all the time about losing my sight. Then I stopped worrying about that at all. Living in a state of permanent vigilance is corrosive. It’s also almost impossible.
I share that because many of you write to me occasionally to ask me for updates on how, in terms of my vision, I’m doing, and the answer — very well — isn’t simply about my left optic nerve, which remains healthy, or my adjustment to monocular vision, a work in steady if perpetual progress.
It’s about being blessed with wiring that allows me to keep dread at bay. It’s about looking at and really seeing the infinitely greater sorrows and uncertainties that most people live with and through. It’s about gratitude and optimism, which in my case have their own dedicated season, their own stubborn perfume. They smell of pumpkin spice.
