As summer slips away, I want to connect with you. Here are the first three paragraphs from my new book which will be coming out in 2028.
“Rising slowly after my twenty-minute seated meditation, I reveled in the sacred stillness. Calmly scanning the sun-dappled bedroom, I remained largely unconscious of my newly implanted monofocal lenses that made seeing distance without glasses possible. I felt gratitude for cataract surgery as I gazed out the French doors we had installed to maximize our view of the woods. I mused to myself, If trees weren’t blocking my view, my new eyes would be able to see the horizon. This in honor of my father who, before he died in 2009, in a pseudo-gruff voice—the one we kids heard as, “Don’t take offense but I really mean this,”—told my sister how claustrophobic he felt while visiting her home in Colorado: “The mountains in your back yard block the horizon!”
Recalling his complaint brought to mind the first time I realized he was getting old. I was charged with returning him to the farm after cataract surgery in Marshalltown. I picked him up from the clinic and walked beside him as he shuffled slowly towards the car. The oversized black plastic eye protection they had given him in the clinic was futuristic, anachronistically covering his gold wire-framed glasses, which shone faintly underneath. As he lowered himself into the passenger seat, I noticed his outfit, the uniform of men born in the 1920s: a plain white undershirt, solid color long-sleeved shirt and dark gray pants, topped off with a faux-leather jacket and English driving hat. He wasn’t wearing his work boots or his leather slippers, both of which I was used to seeing him in but had instead worn his ankle length side-zippered Sunday boots. I sat in the driver’s seat, preparing to back out of the parking space, when he nearly shouted, “I’m blinded by the light!” Suddenly, I was ten years old and really frightened, wondering if I’d done something wrong. But when I looked over at him, I noticed how uncomfortable he looked, not only with the bright light but with being in the passenger seat for the first time. He was a fiercely independent man. Something had shifted for both of us, and perhaps this is why a barking voice inside my own head commanded, “I will never opt for cataract surgery!”
At that, a sudden, all-encompassing pain interrupted my morning reverie. I had a problem: all my teeth ached. Every incisor, canine, and molar hurt. I’ve had my share of singular toothaches, but I’d never felt pain, or worry, for all my teeth at once. This pain was as intense and unusual as what I experienced during a hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I remembered how shocked I had been that my boots rubbed blisters on all ten toes and afterward, when I had watched both of my big toenails come off. How could it be that all my teeth hurt this morning? And why all of a sudden like this? What on earth could this mean? Walking into the living room, I frantically scrolled through the contact list on my smart phone looking for the dentist’s number. Normally this would be a no-brainer for me, but with all my attention going toward the pain, my circuits were scrambled.
