Now I See

Lately I don’t see so good. (Bad grammar intended) Ah, the joys of growing older! My first collection of reading glasses made their appearance several years ago and have since been replaced by more powerful models. "We need morrre power, Captain!" (Thank you, Mr. Scot.) Blessed with perfect eyesight until sometime in my forties, I have found my diminishing ability to see things up close to be, well, frustrating. If only my arms were longer…

I still reach for the nail file and start in with my shaping only to realize that I cannot see what I’m doing…at all! I’ve mastered the art of holding an item as far from my face as possible while tipping my head back a little farther and scowling down at the teeny, tiny, sort-of-coming-into-focus writing. And my true transition to paying by debit card alone began about the time that I started scrawling out very blurry looking checks...blurry to me, anyway. Who has time to fish for glasses in the check stand?

This morning I simply wanted to find my little zirconia earrings. They were somewhere in that handful of tiny baubles floating in the small greenish ring bowl on top of my bedroom bookshelf…at about chin level. Needless to say as I peered at this collection of silver balls and sparkling studs all I saw was a cluster if shapes and glitter, kind of like when you squint at a disco ball. Everything is just vaguely…shiny. So with a sigh I picked up the bowl, and held it down, and tipped by head back, and scowled…and finally found what I was looking for. But all the while I’m thinking, “I can’t believe I have to do this!”

There was a time, a good long time, that I could see things up close. Now I have to stand back or do that stretchy arm, tippy head, scowl down your nose thing. My 12th grade English teacher has unknowingly found revenge. I used to sit in the back row of Mrs. Thompson’s class and offer to hold her book “back here” for her whenever she started tipping head and stretching arms. Good thing she liked me. (Actually, she was my favorite teacher. My inner word nerd blossomed under her enthusiasm for expounding on our weekly vocab words, mapping out the culture of Chaucer, diagramming sentences, and making us pump out yet another essay. But I digress…)

Tonight as I felt for the black pair of specs on my nightstand and crept out of the bedroom to begin another night of insomnia I saw something I hadn’t seen before. Not a real thing, but a flicker of a thought that captured full attention. My journey of sight to blur to holding it away and seeing again parallels my inner journey of seeing. So many years spent immersed in life, children to be raised, issues to be pressed through. Mulling around in that crowded stand of trees and trying to find my way. Only seeing what was right in front of me. But now as I’ve grown older there has been a knowing that standing back from all those things, gazing upon the whole forest, gives the keenest sight.

I have loved each new decade of my life better than the last for this very reason…or reasons: insight, perspective, context. And with those a deeper knowledge of the God who knew me before time and formed me in my mother’s womb with these very eyes – sort of greyish, but sometimes looking green or blue depending on what I’m wearing. You have to look at the whole to see their color. It’s His amazing grace that has taken me from blind to “now I see.” These are good thoughts on my countdown to fifty. The next decade is days away. Though my eyesight is going, I can praise Jesus that my vision is getting better.

IRRITATING

So how does a nice girl like me get so surly on such a lovely spring day?

(bats her thinning lashes)

I mean, I was just sitting there minding my own business, eating an apple with peanut butter. So far, so good. Granted, I had missed my sweat producing, stress-reducing workout this morning. I was all good intentions and black stretchy pants, but my black-clad bottom stayed on the couch a bit too long lingering over coffee and status updates.

So I made up the fictional Lazy Bottom Lounge “where middle-aged women come to drink coffee, laugh it up, and swap aches & pains. And where dust bunnies come to retire. Open most days from whenever I get up till about 4pm. Please call ahead,” posted the aforementioned silliness on Facebook, then went to a friend’s house for fellowship & prayer. She even gave me coffee & a low-fat, whole wheat banana muffin. (She’s a dietitian, you know, and every recipe will have the fat squeezed out before baking! …I love you, Diana!!)

Friends, prayer, coffee, yummies. What a great start to the day! So what happened?

I came home, it was all sunny and warm, and I was lunching on my usual apple snack when I felt this subtle chafing inside, like some sort of attitudinal heartburn. Then time slipped by, again, and I found myself throwing on non-gym clothes and sprucing my wavy day-before-hair that picked up some extra bounce from last night’s pillow perm. “Gah! I look pale and dead!” Blush, blush, blush! A touch more cover up on the dark circles. Throw on my favorite green jean jacket…yada, yada…and I’m off!

Yes, I’m off. In more ways than one. Off kilter. Off balance. In a hurry and secretly wishing that I could stay home at the Lazy Bottom Lounge and be silly in my comfy workout pants, or finally fold the sheets in the other room, put away the laundry from two days ago, and get my bed made before 3. I could even chase a few dust bunnies with the Swiffer that’s been prepped and ready for action since last week or just take a walk in the sunshine.

But I had places to be and people to see and worthy things to do. So I held my tongue and was outwardly fairly patient. Nothing that needed doing was hard. No one I was with was difficult. Yet even the offer of coffee and goodies at the end of the journey didn’t stop the simmer of irritation. This is not the kind of bubbly that gets you a Miss Congeniality award.

Do you ever have days like that where you’re thinking, “What is wrong with me?!”

A. Am I tired?

B. Am I a jerk?

C. Have I been hijacked by mid-life hormones? …or

D. All of the above, so

E. Will someone please just take me some place quiet where I can’t hurt anyone?!

And can I take a nice long nap…until May?

Ah, May. Mid-life is approaching. At least the numerical marker that is the traditional and much joked about top of the hill that you’re now going over. (No pushing!) But surly, and cranky, and tired? Seriously? Being irritated is just, well…irritating! And I’d rather be silly, goofy, or even the butt of some you’re-getting-old joke than “surly.” Surly is for weathered-faced bandits or the mean old hag in some Dickens novel. I might be getting old, but I’m not that old. I’ve just never pictured myself as surly.

I’m pretty much a certified goofball (the only certification I have). I am a klutz in the kitchen (there are witnesses). I love making up silly puns and sillier faces. I speak in various accents whenever appropriate (or inappropriate). And I am prone to pursue laughter (yours and mine) even more passionately than dark chocolate. Cross my “eyes” and hope to die…

Ok, maybe that wasn’t the best choice of words.

All I can say is, this girl is not going down without a fight! Crankiness…be gone! Surliness…get a life! Hormones?! Don’t make me come over there! Don’t make me use my mom voice!

There are some former kids from a youth camp many years ago that can tell you how scary my mom voice is! Ha! Can I get a witness?

Wow. What am I saying? (pause)

Maybe I have been cranky all along. (longer pause)

Now THAT is irritating.