An Unblinding Light

Oprah is smiling at me from the magazine rack across the waiting room at Barnes Retina Institute in St. Louis. With her arms flung wide, her body slightly bent at the waist, she looks ready to laugh with her whole body.

I stare at her for awhile, wanting to be in on the joke. When she becomes blurry, I will know that the eye drops the technician put in several minutes ago have taken effect.

Maybe if they dilate soon, we can get this over with quickly. It’s my sixth surgery to correct diabetic retinopathy, but I am not used to this procedure. I can’t shake the anxiety of waiting.

I close my eyes to help speed the process of opening my pupils wide so the doctor can shine his bright light into them and cauterize the swollen, leaking blood vessels behind the retina and prevent any potential vision loss.

“I’ve had about 67 of these surgeries,” an older man’s voice invades my thoughts. Sitting behind me, he tells his friend about his struggles with diabetes. “I just can’t get it under control,” he says.

I try to remember when was the last time I monitored my blood sugar…and did I remember to take my medicine today? What about that donut I had last night? “I’m killing myself from the inside,” I chide myself. “God, don’t let me go blind,” I almost whisper. I shift in my seat, check my watch and survey the overflowing waiting room. It’s going to be a long afternoon.

The waiting room is nearly empty when my name is finally called. I follow another technician to a smaller room with a lot of strange equipment that has begun to at least look familiar. The doctor greets me kindly, if not warmly.

His name is Dr. Blinder. Even in my anxiety, I always want to tease him in a voice reserved for close friends, “So, Dr. Blinder, anybody give you a hard time about your name?”

But he doesn’t invite such familiarity. Soft-spoken and reserved, he looks like he takes his job way too seriously. Today, though, I’m glad he does, so I decide again not to broach the subject.

More eye drops go in, these to numb my eyes. The doctor adjusts the chin rest so that if I lean forward a bit, I can rest my head in front of his machine almost comfortably. The technician fastens a cloth band around the back of my head, “just to remind you to keep your chin down during the procedure,” she says.

During a series of equipment adjustments and murmured communication between doctor and assistant, my heart begins to beat faster…almost imperceptibly at first. “Breathe,” I tell myself as the doctor puts a sort of monocle in my left eye to keep it open. “Don’t forget to breathe.”

It’s a brief warning before the flashes of light begin. The intense white light seems to bore through my pupil and into my body. My toes curl and lift off the ground. My fingers clench around the armrests. I concentrate on my breathing again to suppress the scream welling up in my chest.

“Just breathe,” I urge myself as the laser flashes over and over. “In…out; again, in…out.”

“Try to keep your right eye open,” he says gently. But it is almost impossible, as it tightens defensively against the tortuous light. Twice before, my opposite eye squeezed so tightly, the monocle popped out.

It seems like an eternity, but it couldn’t be more than fifteen minutes before the doctor turns off the light, moves his machine back and says, “OK, all done. You did great.”

Unstrapped from the chin rest, I look around the room. Everything is bathed in red. I know it will go away, but it always startles me. I nod as the doctor tells me to “take it easy” for the rest of the day. We exchange pleasantries.

Walking back into the empty waiting room, I fish around in my bag for the sunglasses I am almost positive I dropped in there this morning. I’m going to need them. It is so bright in here.



*NOTE: Since writing this for a seminary class assignment in 2002, I have had several more surgeries in both eyes. I am legally blind in my right eye and have significant damage in the left one. Doctors say my eyes have stabilized—meaning no current leakage—but no treatment or surgery can get the vision that I’ve lost back. My diabetes continues to be a struggle, and I now take insulin to control it.

Battle scars

I don't always notice it when I'm looking in the mirror. But every so often, it stands out in stark contrast to my pale skin.

I run my fingers along the red-rimmed, slightly crooked valley it left on my chest…and I thank God again for staying steadfastly by my side—through what I blithely refer to as my 2008 “health crisis.”

The valley is created by a combination of two overlapping scars. One is a misshapened, round dent in my throat where a tracheotomy was once performed to help me breathe. The other is a narrow scar that runs from my throat, down along my breast bone to the top of my ribcage. That's from the heart valve replacement.

It's hard for me to believe, but I've had these scars for over a year and a half now. The heart surgery dates back to Christmastime, 2008. I had an infection that destroyed my mitral valve. Bits of infection broke off and floated to my brain, causing a stroke.

The trach came later--sometime in January or February. I was having trouble catching my breath and kept passing out when my breathing stopped altogether. I couldn't talk for a long time and was on a feeding tube at one point.

There was a time where I felt virtually no emotion. I couldn’t write, couldn’t pray, couldn’t laugh or cry. It concerned me; I wondered if I would ever feel again, ever love again, if I would ever be passionate about anything again. But somehow, I persevered and eventually broke through my flat affect.

I kept a journal in the hospital. My handwriting is shaky and I chose the wrong words sometimes. But on Feb. 5, 2009, I wrote, “I’m crying finally….I’m also talking to God again. ‘Hello, God. It’s me, Arlene. I’ve missed you.’”

It has been a slow, arduous recovery, and I still have setbacks from time to time, but it’s mostly behind me, now. When I look at these scars—unsightly as they are—I am not inclined to cover them up. I don’t feel self-conscious about them, nor am I embarrassed by how they look.

I wear these scars like a badge of courage, a gold star of achievement, an emblem of the journey from near-death back to full life. To me, they are beautiful.

They are my battle scars…reminding me of the journey home, with all its bumps, detours and turn backs; all its straight climbs and sharp curves, and all the falls and get-back-ups, too. These scars call out to me—“You are a survivor!”

Shades of Green

Varigated green

Sweeps through the hearty landscape
Vibrant abundance

(A view of the gardens at Maple Lawn Homes in Eureka)

Persona Poem

Arlene
Sister, friend, writer, pastor;
Lover of words, ideas, & stories;
Who dreams of peace in all nations, compassion in all hearts, & tolerance in all minds;
Who needs love, kindness &  understanding;
Who gives her heart, freely; her mind openly; & her self, wholly;
Who fears darkness, emptiness, & loneliness;
Who would like to see wholeness of body, mind, & spirit
for everyone, everywhere, for all time;
Franks.

Peace Poem

Peace
Precious, priceless
Yearning, seeking, grasping…
It is a journey, not a destination
Grace

Grandma's Garden

As Published in the Woodford County Journal
July 29, 2010
Frankly Speaking

My Grandma Hansel was a hard woman to know. She was stern, austere—I saw her frown more often than smile. Her anger always frightened me, as I constantly thought I was in trouble for unknown misdeed.

She died when I was about 6 years old, so my memories of her were as a small child visiting her and Grandpa Hansel’s home near Terre Haute, Indiana. They had an old farm house on a few acres of land.

When we would visit from our small town near Indianapolis, we would pile out of the van—all 7 of us—and go around the house, past the kitchen door, by the root cellar where grandma cultivated her African violets.

I remember vividly going past the house lined with grandma’s flower beds, with large geodes and other stones from grandpa’s rock collection scattered around them.

We would walk by the garage, a barn-like structure that was full of equipment and tools and, well, stuff, up to the rafters. Attached to the garage was an outhouse.

I’m sure that many of you remember outhouses. This one was a two-holer that Grandpa had built and attached to the garage so young hoodlums couldn’t tip it over on Halloween. Grandpa didn’t put a bathroom in the house until the mid-1970s.

Beyond the buildings, the back lawn opened up to a magnificent garden. My eyes would widen as I took in the scene--my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles brothers and sisters and cousins all milling about in the garden.
First, I would look through the tall corn stalks--as tall as sky-scrapers to me. I’d see a cousin peering back from the other end of the row, and we’d wave at each other.

Past the walls of corn, the garden opened up to plants with vines and leaves reaching out and overlapping one another. There were tomatoes of various colors and every kind of pepper one would want. She had varieties of squash and there were always potatoes; peas; carrots; radishes; turnips; pole beans, with their vines twirling around the tall sticks rising up from the ground…and kohl rabbi.

It was a root vegetable we would eat straight from the garden. I don’t even remember washing off the dirt! Even my picky-eater siblings liked it—it had a mild, slightly sweet taste as I recall. I haven’t had it sine then, because I’ve never found it in any store or vegetable stand.

Off to the side, in a place of honor it seemed, was an asparagus bed. Did you know that when you plant asparagus you don’t see the fruits of your labor for two years? I was always amazed at that, especially since I hate asparagus. But for Grandma, it was worth the wait and effort.

My grandmother spent all her time in the garden, planting, tilling, weeding, coaxing. My mom has stories from her childhood of grandma attempting to make dinner for the family.

She would put on a pot to boil, and go back to the garden. By the time she remembered to check the pot, there would be a hole in the bottom because all the liquid had boiled away. Consequently, my grandfather did most of the cooking.

When Grandma was in the garden, she came alive. She smiled, she laughed….you don’t know how rare it was to see my grandma laugh. I remember the sound of it, the way her eyes would crinkle and glisten as she talked to anyone who cared about her garden.

Sitting beside her on the big swing under the willow tree, I learned skills I rarely use anymore--shucking corn, shelling peas, snapping beans. But I also learned skills I still use--compassion, humor, curiosity as I listened to the adults talk and laugh and share family stories.

This is how my grandmother was able to express her love for her children and grandchildren. It was confusing to me, because this image of her was so different than the demanding and disapproving one I usually experienced.

As a child, I didn’t know who the real Grandma was, but looking back on that time, I realize now that both images were true and real.

Love is complicated and messy sometimes. At times, love is difficult to give and just as hard to receive. But love comes in so many packages, so many shapes and sizes. Love comes in unexpected ways, and we don’t always recognize it when it appears.

Sometimes it takes us years, even decades to look back and see clearly how an ordinary act held within it so much love. And at other times, love is immediately recognizable.

In my mind, I am about 4 years old looking at all the vines weaving around the tomato cages and sprawling out over the ground in Grandma’s garden. Those tomatoes looked like red and yellow jewels hidden within the prickly vines, but I knew better than to touch the forbidden fruit.

So I stand there lost in a daydream about a heroic girl fending her way through a vine-like forest to reach the lost treasure. Suddenly I become aware of my grandmother’s gaze on me. I look up into her eyes with more than a bit of fear, even though she is smiling at me. I always thought she could see right into my soul.

After a moment, without saying a word, she reaches into those tangled, sticky vines and plucks the reddest, most ripe tomato she sees. She hands it to me, the smile now enveloping her face and making her eyes sparkle.

“Here,” she says as she hands me the precious fruit. “Eat it just like an apple. You don‘t even need salt”
I do, and she is right, and it tastes like manna from heaven. For one clear moment, I know that she loves me, and that’s all that matters.

You've got to have friends

As Published in the Woodford County Journal July 8, 2010
Frankly Speaking
You’ve got to have friends
By Arlene Franks

“A Friend won’t defend a husband who buys his wife an electric skillet for her birthday.” ~Erma Bombeck
So, let’s talk about reality TV. In an earlier “Frankly Speaking,” I wrote about crime shows, how addictive they are and harmful to our individual and collective sense of hope. This time, I want to make a case for how reality TV (which more accurately should be called surreality TV) tends to distort our perception of relationships.

Reality shows aren’t as addictive to me as crime shows. I weed most of them out categorically. I have rules, you know:

~no celebriality.

~nothing tacky, sleazy or salacious.

~no spoiled brats (see celebriality, above).

~no violent, mean, back-stabbing or scary reality.

~no ‘vote ‘em off the island’ (or outta the house) shows.

~no ‘get me a date’ (or a partner for the rest of my life) shows.

~no kiddie pageants (See spoiled brats, above).

That pretty-much pares it down to shows based on skill, like “Top Chef,” “Project Runway” and “The Amazing Race,” and even they get close to the edge sometimes.

Now, there have been times when I’ve broken my own rules and became engrossed in a show from my ‘no watch’ list. For instance, a couple of years ago, I somehow got caught up in one of those ‘find me a date’ shows. It fit squarely into several categories—sleazy, mean, vote ‘em off, pseudo celebriality, etc.

I’m embarrassed to say I watched every appalling episode, each more disgusting than the last. (shudder) I sat there week after week, asking myself, “Why am I watching this?” I excused it in my mind as being material for my continual study of human nature. (Yeah, well, it was the best I could come up with.)

This year, I used the same rationale for getting caught up in “The Real Housewives of New York.” What hooked me in was a conflict between two of the women that eventually affected the whole tribe of wealthy and privileged women the show follows to each party; shopping trip; and self-promoting, exhibitionist event around NYC.

It was a silly, petty argument that turned into a major messy brawl. Most of the women were taking sides, while one woman valiantly tried to bridge the rift until the pressure got to her and she exploded all over the place. It wasn’t pretty.

But what was even uglier was the way these women—purported to be friends—treated one another. Degrading one another in public, making snide comments behind the other’s back, laughing in triumph each time they won in their ‘gotcha’ game—they were vicious. And, in my humble opinion, that’s not friendship.

I grew up with TV as a constant backdrop to my life. I know how influential it can be to kids just forming their world views. Reality TV strengthens the stereotypes that feed our bigotry and make our lives smaller.

In the ‘reality’ world:

~women are catty—they bicker and treat one another shabbily.

~men are Neanderthals—rude, crude and lewd—who get into trouble whenever they’re together.

~marriage is based on looks, lies, and wealth—infidelity is ramped.

~families are completely hopeless, with idiot parents who live vicariously through their children who are wild, entitled and ungrateful.

~friendships are superficial, interchangeable, and disposable—if one doesn’t fit throw it away and try another one on for size.

Isn’t that a pretty bleak and even dangerous view of the world? It certainly runs counter to my own experience. I have found most people in my world to be kind, compassionate, and giving. Most folks have a sense of humor, taking themselves lightly and their life’s call seriously.

Friends, I’ve found, bear one another’s burdens. While you’re laid up, they plow your fields and take care of your family. They bring you flowers from their gardens, food from their kitchens and books and music from their personal collections…along with prayers from their hearts.

I’ve been in the hospital on several occasions lately, and each time, my friends have sat with me, making jokes and exchanging small talk while we waited for the doctors to come back with test results. They’ve acted as advocates for me, telling the medical team things I’d forgotten about my history, asking questions I hadn’t thought of, calling family and friends on my behalf.

They’ve visited with my cat to make sure she is fed and doesn’t get lonely. While there, they even cleaned the place up! Now that’s friendship.

Friends treat you with respect—they wouldn’t say behind your back what they shouldn’t say when you’re face to face. They know when to be on your side and when to tactfully tell you you’re wrong. And you know they’re right.

As friends we make impromptu ‘play dates’ with one another; care for one another’s spirits; allow the other to be truly unique, truly genuine. We give one another a voice. We cry together, laugh together, and sit in silence together.

That, to me, is what true friendship is. Not the fluff and junk of television. Of course, we all know this to be true—don’t we? I hope so. I hope we recognize reality TV for what it is—ratings-grabbing, shock-producing, hate-mongering, muck-raking TV…not to mention mind-numbing.

But, alas, reality shows are cheap to make, and they continue to be oh, so popular. Ratings sell, you know. Conversely, logic would dictate that if we stop watching them, they’ll likely go away.

With that in mind, I recommit myself to questioning why I watch, to keep adding to my ‘no watch’ list and to trying harder to adhere to it. And perhaps you can join me in making this pledge:

“I sincerely pledge to help decrease the popularity of reality shows by not following them, discussing them, betting on them, imitating them or supporting them in any way.”

Maybe one day, the era of reality TV will be over and real life can once again thrive.