I know the nature of the Universe is change. Still, when my body decides to make a change without my prior approval, I do find it somewhat startling, and since I became middle-aged, less than pleasant.
Around the time I turned 42, my vision suddenly changed. Not gradually, suddenly. Overnight I was unable to read while wearing my glasses or contact lenses. Startling.
This was not the first time my vision had been an issue. In fact, it has apparently always been poor. When I was 15, a sophomore in high school, my mother noticed that I was squinting to read the hymn numbers posted at the front of the church we were attending at the time. She asked if I was unable to read them without squinting. What a ridiculous question! No one can read anything that small and far away without squinting. Right? I mean, this is why I always sat at the front of the classroom in school. Clearly none of my classmates cared that much about reading what was written on the blackboard. Right? Apparently, none of those assumptions was true. So one eye exam later (20/125 is shockingly bad vision, actually—how had my pediatrician not noticed my squinting earlier?) I was fitted with the glasses I would wear for the next ten years. A change, an adjustment; I carried on.
(As a point of historical interest, it was also at this juncture that I learned my mother was not universally opposed to cheating. Between the time I saw my optometrist and the time I received my new glasses I was due to take an eye test to get my driving permit. She whispered the letters to me so that I could memorize them and appear to pass the test with perfect vision. It was a valuable lesson. In something. But we agreed that when my license came up for renewal, I would own up to needing corrective lenses.)
My eyes treated me with equanimity for the next 27 years, apart from the usual minor annual fluctuations in their ability to see at a distance, and their acceptance of contact lenses in place of glasses, at some point in our collective twenties.
And then that big change, at 42. Startling, as I said, but not insurmountable. My optometrist and I settled on a monovision prescription for my contact lenses—one lens to correct for distance, one lens to correct for close vision, and one brain to (eventually) process all the information into a semblance of normal vision. Good job, brain! Way to join the team! I figured the four of us (self, two eyes, one brain) would now carry on like that forever. We had made our adjustments to the latest change, and surely now things would settle down.
But this past year my eyes startled me with yet another less-than-pleasant change. It was my eyelid, actually, and the change was a basal cell carcinoma. I’m told that this is the least serious kind of skin cancer, and for that I am grateful, but still: Someone was going to have to cut a big chunk out of my eyelid. Like, right next to my eye. Which I use for seeing. This was a scary change.
I won’t leave you in suspense. Everything is working out, although I had to have the excision procedure twice over six weeks, since the cell margins were not 100% clear on the first pathology. But it’s all over now, I’m healing, and apart from a tightening of the skin under one eye, you would never know that anything had been seriously wrong.
But I’ll know.
I guess I’m not young anymore. And these middle-aged bodily changes are truly unsettling. I can easily accept that if I trip, fall down, cut myself, bang my head, eat spoiled food, consume too much sugar, too much alcohol, the resultant negative effects—action and reaction—will be predictable and therefore manageable. I learned these lessons as a young child, and they have stood the test of time. Except the alcohol one; I was quite a bit older when I learned about that. But when something unexpected arises in my body that I seem to have no control over (Where did these abnormal cells come from? Did I do anything to cause them? Are they all gone? When and where else will they appear?), I find myself succumbing to anxiety and fear.
America is also not young anymore. America is (hopefully) middle-aged. And lately she has been undergoing some startling, less-than-pleasant changes that have been interfering with her (our) ability to see clearly. Widespread state-sanctioned propaganda. Lies and conspiracy theories polluting the mainstream. Shocking displays of racism and hatred. Abnormal cells. It is unsettling.
So I’ve been thinking about change a lot lately. Change and the nature of the Universe. Change and my ability to accept it. Change and our collective ability to adapt. Openness. Agility. Preparation. Not prevention. That’s not a real thing.
2020 is a big year. My antennae are up, and my eyes are fully open. I hope yours are too.