A Dim View

Barbers, like bartenders (I hear), know things. They accumulate wisdom, trivia, and human insights the way the rest of us accumulate gray hairs and (apparently) hangovers. So, when, between scissor clips, my barber lays her occasional facts and observations before me, I tend to embrace them as, well … a cut above average.

Years ago, she told me that human bodies change in increments of seven years; by the end of those intervals, we can note substantial alterations to our physical appearance – which is why, looking back at photos from, say, 2018, we think, “I looked so much younger! What happened?”

This is one of my seventh years, and I’m seeing, more – and less – clearly, the changes she’s talking about.

I called the tree guy in January, to see what we could do to restore a little vitality to our beloved front yard ash. (Beloved, because it was planted about the time we moved in, 30 years ago, and had watched faithfully over our comings and goings ever since.) The short answer, the specialist said, was “nothing.” The ash was just too far gone, and the cost of the tree surgeries needed to save it was just too prohibitive.

So, the tree went away, leaving a lonesome place against our little patch of sky.

A couple of months later, on a crowded end-of-Monday freeway, my faithful car came to its end. Old Paint had served me in good stead across 14 years and some 200,000 miles. My mechanic said I might get $200 … about a dollar for every thousand miles. I bid the car a fond farewell, and wondered how to make my daily pilgrimage without him.

The dealer offered a good price for the same make and model, 2025 edition. “They have nothing in common but the name,” he said. Old Paint, he noted, had nary a computer to his frame. The new car had 200, meaning, he said, that the only repairs I could affect on my own were changing the tires and the battery.

Then, eyeing me closely, he edited that. “Actually, just the tires.”

So, now I drive a car that requires a master’s degree in engineering just to fill the gas tank, and a Ph.D. to change the radio station. The dashboard blinks more lights than the evening sky, and more obscure symbols than a caveman’s wall. Her size and shape and color blend perfectly with every other car in the parking lot, but that’s how we roll, apparently, doing transportation in the modern age.

So, this is the year of change. My tree is gone. My car is gone. And, increasingly, my eyesight’s gone, too.

The floaters were skimming over my eyes like mosquitos on a swamp – so dense and thick and distracting, the eye doctor suggested surgery. Now the floaters, happily, are gone, but cataracts swiftly replaced them, and suddenly, the world has retreated into murky anonymity … faces losing their features, signs and screens and pages blurring into little more than colors on colors.

Like that, I’m back in fourth grade, knowing people by their voices and outlines, and wondering why I’m the only one who can’t see anything on the jumbotron.

Only … in fourth grade, I didn’t know what I was missing. I just figured everyone saw the world in the same shadowy shapes I did. When a friend loaned me his glasses, I nearly jumped to see life racing toward me in such extraordinary 4K clarity.

So now, I do know how much there is to lose.

Reading through all the usual insurance warnings and obligatory cautions, I suddenly realize that – for all the doctor’s assurances and happy testimonies of friends for whom this surgery has done wonderful things – there’s some chance that this won’t help, and could harm, my eyes. I'm not really expecting that ... but it does bring a lot of thoughts into focus.

People often talk about what they’d do “if I only had one more day to live.” But what if I only had a few more hours to see?

It’s quite a sobering proposition. Blindness would mean, likely, the end of my work as a writer. No more quick emails, or casual texts with friends. So many favorite books I could never read for myself again, and movies I could only listen to. No hopping into the car to run up to a restaurant for lunch. No more sunsets, or night skies, or trees bobbing in the wind, or watching my dog look deep into my face with his earnest requests and gentle curiosity.

No more gazing on my wife’s lovely features, as she reads or cooks or sings along with the radio.

To never again see those pretty eyes crinkle with laughter ….

The path to my becoming a writer began in childhood, at a youth camp my father was leading. I followed him on his morning rounds, and sat with him, during the Bible study hour, as he led a small group of teens in reading and discussing Mark’s account of Jesus’ encounter with a blind man, Bartimaeus.

He invited them – and me – to write a few thoughts on the story. I chose to frame my seven-year-old’s perspective as a poem. For whatever reason, my rhymes drew many comments from the youth in our group, and considerable encouragement to write more. At the time, I didn’t have much interest in that. But a seed was planted, and … well, here I am, a-typing.

And, thinking. On the changes of life, and the passing of its seasons. On God’s beautiful – even when it’s blurry – world.

Bartimaeus has become something of a friend, after all these years of reading and reflecting on his story. Tonight, I feel like I understand so much better that exchange he shared, on that dusty old Jericho road, with the man who held his fate in His hands.

“What do you want Me to do for you?”

 “Oh, Great One … that I may receive my sight.”