I held the tissue in my hand and stared. As I had pulled it away after blotting a drop of excess medication from my eye, it's color had caught my eye. White was one of the few colors I had learned to recognize as a child. How long had it been since I had known anything was white?
I laid the eye shield aside and reached for my glasses. With my glasses on, I stared at the top of the dresser. I saw objects of different shapes and sizes. I began to touch them, trying to make sense out of what I was seeing. I tried to conjure up the memories of similar objects from my childhood.
Sitting in the chair near my lamp, I took off my white tennis shoe and tossed it, watching it sail across the room. I repeated the process with my other shoe and then peeled off my socks, shut my eyes, and tossed them. As I scanned the floor to see where they had landed, I felt like a little child. No matter... I had probably been a child the last time I had seen shoes and socks.
"Things will look much different in a few months," the doctor had told me that morning before he released me from the hospital. "Your vision will be a bit cloudy because of the gas bubble, but your cornea is clear and we expect you'll see some improvement over several months."
Several months! I couldn't imagine what things would be like several months down the road. Already I was seeing things I hadn't seen in many years.
I got up from my chair and went out into the living room. On the way, I passed the dining room table, and some papers lying on it caught my eye. Papers! When had I last seen papers?
In the living room, I stood near the television, mesmerized by the moving images. I tried in vain to identify something, even a color. I could not; and the images made me feel nauseated.
I headed back to my bedroom to put the patch on my eye. I wanted to be in the dark. My mind was overwhelmed by visual stimulation after living almost completely without it for the past eight months. Over time I would become accustomed to it and spend more time looking at things. For now, I needed rest
During the first weeks after surgery, I discovered new things to see every day. I became almost addicted to looking at new things, and I had to remind myself when I became overwhelmed that everything would still be there for me to see after I had rested. I could identify with Sheila Hocken's feelings following the removal of congenital cataracts at age 30, as described in her book, Emma and I.
I kept thinking, "If those colours were so beautiful, what about the rest, what about everything else?" The colours were still dancing and whirling about in my mind behind the bandages, changing pattern as in a child's kaleidoscope, and exploding like fireworks. What was it like outside ? I wanted to tear the bandages off and rush to the window and see everything.
I wanted to share my discoveries, but there were very few words that I could find to describe the experience of seeing again. I looked at each new object or picture and thought, "It's really here, and it really has color!"
Perhaps the most fascinating thing for me was looking at people. I could recall seeing some facial features as a child; but after my surgery, I was fascinated anew by faces.
Because my vision was still so limited, my exposure to faces was limited to those people who stood within a foot or two of me while we talked--or children I held in my arms. My four-year-old niece took great delight in climbing up into my arms, pressing her face close to mine, and asking, "Can you see me?" Although Harmony did not yet understand what blindness really meant, I think the fact that I could now see her face fascinated her as much as it did me.
Some people expressed uncertainty upon hearing of my interest in faces. "What if I look like Frankenstein?" asked one friend who was blind. Charlotte Sanford expressed the feelings I had about seeing faces much more eloquently in her book, Second Sight than I could.
I found nobody, no human face unbeautiful, no shape or form or person unpleasing to the sight. I suppose a superficial explanation might be that, with my sight returned, I was so grateful that everything and everyone was beautiful, but I think the reasons are far deeper.
Because of the premium society puts on personal attractiveness, a seeing person unconsciously puts labels on people: they are pretty, ugly, fat, handsome. These judgments usually stick and color your attitudes toward them. But I couldn't see, so I had to use other standards. Because I couldn't see what a person looked like, I got to know them from the inside, where true beauty lives. Now that I can really see, appearance is meaningless. I don't really see the outside of a person at all; my concentration is within.
In a way, I can thank God for my blindness because I learned to see correctly. I find beauty in the ordinary things about me, the petals of a rose, the shine of the chrome sink faucets, the texture of a hand. (p. 196)
I realized then that I had entered the world of people who can judge based on appearance. Not only that, but because I could see, he was more vulnerable before me than I was before him. This revelation humbled me, and I wanted him to understand that seeing his face was for me a new way to affirm something I already believed. He was my dear friend, perfectly unique and wonderful just the way he was. As Sheila Hocken explained:
I heard the ward door open-it had a characteristic squeak-and heard Don's footsteps coming down the ward. I thought, 'Oh God, this is him. This is the moment', and I looked up. I saw a stranger coming towards me, and did not for an instant connect him with Don. I thought fleetingly, 'Brown, suntanned, handsome', and then, "It's Don!" I could not grasp the idea properly, though. He was so much more distinguished-looking, and so very much more handsome than I could possibly have imagined. In one glance I took in his navy blue suit, very smart, and his tie that had little pink and yellow flowers on a blue background, and at the same time I was struck with the idea of how lucky I was to have a husband whom I not only loved already for everything I had not been able to see, but with whom I instantly fell in love all over again for his appearance.
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