Let’s start with hummingbirds. That beauty has nested right outside of Sophie’s bedroom window. Eye level. I saw it hovering around the other evening and watched it land. I honestly couldn’t believe my eyes, but Carl took the photo. As a person who’s into signs and symbols, who’s superstitious and feels sometimes as if I could morph into my southern Italian grandmother, I’m wondering if it’s a sign. A sign of what?
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I took that screen shot the night before last as I sat watching and listening and weeping and smiling through Realm of Caring’s tribute fundraiser. It was the one-year anniversary of Charlotte Figi’s death — Charlotte of the eponymous Charlotte’s Web cannabis medicine. That mighty child and her mother Paige, along with Heather Barnes Jackson, the Stanley Brothers, Ray Mirzebegian and many, many others changed countless lives, saved countless lives, including our Sophie’s. As one of the original families to use Charlotte’s Web, we were asked to make a short video to include in the night’s online festivities.
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Tonight I made a beef stew. I poured a bit of oil into a heavy pot and waited for it to get hot. While I waited I put a bit of flour in a large bowl with some salt and pepper and then threw the beef cubes in and tossed them until they were well coated. When the oil was hot, I added the beef in two batches, watching the edges curl and the flour darken and the spatters of oil and fat fly out and land. I turned my back on the beef and chopped an onion into medium dice and then I minced four cloves of garlic. I pulled a tube of tomato paste out of the refrigerator and rolled it up like toothpaste until it squirted out the top. The beef was browned in two batches, removed and sitting on a plate, the oil in the pot the burnt bits of beef then more oil and the onions and the garlic and the tomato paste stirred all together until fragrant.
She was born on a cold New York City winter night and made me a mother. She has shaped me, taught me nearly everything of significance that I know, has never spoken a word, her eyes dark pools darkness and light a tree-lover a mermaid a powerful powerful woman.
I haven’t been in these parts for a good long time, and I’ve got nothing. I would say that I’d sort of hit a wall, but I think I hit it a while back and am on the other side in some strange, new and very weird world. I listened to a review of a new novel written by a Very Young Author who got her start or her fame via Yale and then some really good writing of listicles. Everyone loves a listicle. What is a listicle? Carl asked me while we were driving to Huntington Gardens last Friday afternoon. He’s been doing a lot of the driving — ok, all of the driving — what with My Eye Situation, and while I’ve always hated driving with all of ...
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| [medical photo of an eyeball on a computer, green and orange with a fringe of eyelash] |
Take a look.
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| [medical photo of an eyeball on a computer, green and orange with a fringe of eyelash] |
The eye is healing, and I am grateful for that. The “bubble” is slowly dropping and my two eyes are working better together, but I still can’t read very well from a book or even on the computer unless I hold things right up close to my right eyeball. I’ve probably not read fiction now for the longest period in my life. No kidding. It’s been a weird few weeks. I’m depressed and trying to rest. I meditate daily and depend on the two Marias to help me with Sophie. Ave Marias. Carl’s been a dream, dropping in the eye drops four times a day and coaxing me out on walks. My sons sent me a box of chocolate covered strawberries today for Valentine’s Day and a note that made me cry. They are, seriously, perfect in many ways. Sophie is good. The world is weird.
The good news is that I was in the hands of a very capable retinal specialist who was able to repair a tear in my retina yesterday morning. I don't have any restrictions in movement except for bending down or lifting weight over 20 pounds or exercising for a few weeks (the last being, as those who know me, music to my ears). I have a very gnarly left eye and feel vulnerable and disoriented. I feel as if I were on the other side of a ViewMaster, the tiny figure that is being looked at, clicked on, passed by. It’s also as if I were looking out at the world from inside an aquarium, the surface line of water sloshing across my eye, dark on the bottom, light at the top, shadows.
Who among us — the myopics — knew that we walk around with elongated eyeballs whose vitreous can dissolve or liquefy, and in so doing pull down blood vessels to which it might be adhered or even tear at the retina itself causing a hemorrhage, a flooding of the eye cavity on the inside even while the eye on the outside is looking out the window, its host body sitting in the passenger seat of a car, headed to a nearby park to go on a hike on a beautiful Sunday afternoon? This is what happened to me, and while I am grateful that my retina is not detached, I must have surgery on Thursday morning to address any possible tears or rips. My capacity to learn new words never ceases to astonish me — or not “my capacity” but rather the capacity — retinal detachment, retinal specialist, vitreous, vitrectomy, vitreous humor gel, endolaser, gas-fluid exchange.
Tonight I watched a recording of a lecture titled "The Vulva's Pilgrimage: Understanding Medieval Genitalia Badges." I bought a ticket to hear this lecture from The London Drawing Group, so in lieu of listening live at some ungodly hour, I received the recorded version and watched it tonight after dinner. The pandemic has made possible a number of things for me, and, no, I'm not going mad. While I've begun a number of crafts and even dabbled in art for the first time in my life, I'm not yet casting vulvas. Yet might be an operative word there.
I’ve sat down about twenty times this past week, intent on writing something anything but then I just don’t. What is there to say? Why say it? The word meaningless comes to mind or less meaning and I think of coded language.
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Good morning! The picture above is from last night when Carl, Henry, Oliver and I went to Santa Monica and watched the sun go down on 2020. Sophie was at her father's place, so the evening wasn't perfectly perfect, but it was pretty close to perfect being with three men that I love on the beach that I love. When the sun dipped below the horizon, everyone cheered. We drove home and built a little fire in the fire-pit in our backyard, roasted marshmallows and played a game on our phones called Psych or something like that. We drank champagne and whiskey and beer together and laughed and argued but mostly laughed, and it was about the most perfect New Year's Eve I could ever imagine during a pandemic or otherwise, to tell you the truth. I wrote down a few of my current fears and burned them in the fire, and when I went to bed my clothes smelled like smoke. When I woke this morning just before sunrise, my hair still smelled smoky and the moon shone in a band through the back door blinds. I stood there in my mind in the moonlight the year behind us with many ways forward, the rest of it, life, seen through the eyes of the heart.
