These Old Eyes
Thoughts on forgiveness, blindness and Mom
I am thinking of my mother this morning because my eyesight annoys me. I cannot make anything out to read or to write without my (oft misplaced) glasses. I fear I may be slipping into the bifocal territory. Many of my friends already sport them. Soon I shall join them in that mystical world of looking (mostly) clearly forward and marvellously magnified downward.
Anyway, my changing eyesight annoys me, but it hardly counts as one of the greatest tragedies that may or already have befallen me.
Then there’s Mom. She can barely make out facial features from ten feet away. One of her eyes is particularly troublesome. Occasionally, she needs a shot in the affected eye to relieve the pain and swelling. My sister, who lives near her, constantly worries that Mom will stumble over her fat doorstop of a cat, slip in the shower or fall in myriad other scenarios — all of them equally hilarious and terrifying. Recently, Mom broke her hip simply from standing up. She stood. It snapped. She recovered quickly, knock wood, but now needs a cane or a walker — both of which offend her sense of vanity.
I live an ocean away. She knows my voice — even across the Atlantic with a crappy mobile signal — she knows it’s me, even if she struggles to catch some of my words.
Also, I mumble.
Recently I began phoning her once a week. An app on my phone reminds me. I call it my ‘be a better daughter’ app.
I am a lousy daughter. There was a time, an exceedingly long time when she was a lousy mother. But one cannot un-ring a bell. I am far too old and faulty to lug heavy grudges across my shoulders. I too came up short as a mother. The ‘how motherhood ought to be’ versus ‘how it plays out in real life’ are light years apart — so many contingencies, obstacles, and fanciful expectations. Still, we take on the mantle and muddle through.
Sometimes our children forgive us; sometimes not. Forgiving ourselves takes a lifetime and I remain sceptical that it ever truly happens.
Still, I do a lot of giving and asking for forgiveness. Perhaps to check it all off from my to-do before I grow feeble and die list — like a bucket list for my troubled conscience. It helps, but it’s hard. Sometimes forgiveness feels like pulling glass slivers out of my eyes with rusty tweezers.
But those slivers did me no favours. I see so much better without them.
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Originally published at https://elizabethnuanain.substack.com on January 15, 2023.
