Returning on Thursdsay evening from an extra day at work, I changed at Richmond from train to bus. As I waited I looked around marvelling at how bright the nightly scene appeared. I could make out a list of buses lining up on the opposite side of the road, and to my surprise I could read the number on each bus! Then I looked at each shop front and, again to my surprise, I could read the names for some ten shops going way back. I looked at the digital notice board under the bus shelter able to read details of the next three buses arriving quite clearly. I retreated step by step from the bus shelter, with my eyes pinned on the notice board, until the details had begun to blur. I stopped and took large steps back to the board. I counted seventeen large steps (yards?) in which the notice board was clearly legible. I imagined what it must have been like for the blind man to whom Jesus had just given his sight back His surprise, his elation, his wish to explore what more what he could see. All of a sudden my mood lifted. My major sense of affliction and inadequacy over my loss of vison had been addressed. The Monday operation had finally bore fruit, possibly when my eyes were less tired and my brain had sorted out how it was going to interpret the signals hurled at it through my startled optical sense generators (i.e. my eyes).
When I got home I could see that my vision was good enough for me to watch a TV screen without glasses from the back of the sitting room, just as I could before the op, but while wearing my glasses. My near view had deteriorated making it difficult for me to read a newspaper in bad light and being defeated while trying to read small print. So there was good and bad still. As for my current glasses, they were now useless. Could not see a thing through them. If I wanted to see better than what I could see now I would need a new pair of glasses. Unfortunately, I would not be able to apply for a new pair until my post-operation visit on January 4th authorized it. So no new glasses till the end of January. Just in time, I hope, before the Big Adventure.
To share my joy at my improved eyesight, I travelled with Albina to a hairpeice studio in Westbourne Grove. I was finally winning the battle in convincing Albina to get hereslf a proper wig, or two, with real hair, so as to increase her confidence, and override her physical self-hate over her appearance in public with her thinning hair. All the time I reminded her of the need for her to feel confident when and if we were to be invited to the captain's table during our voyage, and to attend social events like that with greater aplomb. Every time she would continue to be shy at a social encounter or a dinner invite, I could now say to her, "Just show them your new hair". Hopefully she may then overcome her reluctance. She chose first one wig, and then, on my insistence, an alternative second, each relatively short but distinctive. I happily payed for both, as well as for a dummy head and various other accessories, to carry and protect the wigs. We celebrated the purchase in a Chinese restaurant near Queensway station. She happily even posed for a picture, with her new baby bear from Poland.
Perhaps at last I will have a new woman in the house, and a new lady to take to social functions. And with my renewed eyesight, I can even drive her there again, including seeing Sandro at Christmas.
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