Genevieve A. Chornenki - Dont Lose Sight: Vanity, incompetence, and my ill-fated left eye

You coming? My roommate, Daphne, calls from the door of our apartment on campus. Its 3:00 a.m.

Be there in a minute.

Genevieve, its a fire alarm!

I know. I know.

Whats taking so long?

Just putting in my contacts.

Contact lenses? Youll fry before you reach the lobby.

Daphne doesnt get it. Its a risk I am willing to take.

Contact lenses arent only about seeing. Theyre about being seenwithout the indignity of eyeglassesin the right light at all hours of the day. Let Daphne head to the lobby in wire-rimmed spectacles with her neck poking out of a dressing gown and her long, bare feet shoved into slippers. Ive got appearances to keep up.

My romance with contact lenses, which would later lead me astray, didnt end after university. If anything, it deepened. I had worn contact lenses enthusiastically from the moment I could afford to buy a pair with money from my part-time job in the basement of the BiWay store. Those first lenses were tiny glass saucers that suctioned onto the front of my eyes. They gave good, crisp vision but at the cost of comfort. One false move and they slid up towards my brain. One loose mohair fibre and the pain was exquisite.

No matter.

As a self-employed mediator and arbitrator, I wore contact lenses in fluorescent-lit meeting rooms and smoke-filled receptions. I wore them on planes, trains, and busses. I wore them from early morning to late at night. So what if my eyes pulsed red in the mirror or felt like they were being abraded with ultrafine sandpaper? You must have eyes like ball bearings, a contact lens fitter once told me.

The evening I met my husband, William, I wore contact lenses. Of course.

It was a blind date, and wed agreed to meet at 6:45 p.m. at the bank machine next to my workplace. Beforehand, Id rinsed off my lenses in the washroom down the hall from my office and put them back into my eyes, hoping Id be able to last the evening without discomfort.

I had heard about William from my friend, Donna. Shed been introduced to him as the nicest man in Toronto, but he didnt meet her standards. Too old, she complained. Too tall.

Well, give me his number, I said. I was into nice. Tall was fine too. And as for agewell, by my mothers standards I was already over the hill. She was running out of novenas and patron saints: Saint Anne, Saint Anne, get her a man.

As soon as Donna gave me the number, I telephoned William at the Labour Relations Board where he worked as a mediator. He answered the phone.

Hello, William, I said. You dont know me from Adam. Well, haha, I guess I should say Eve. My name is Genevieve. Im a friend of Donnas. She talked about you. You sounded like a nice person, and Id like to meet you.

Uh said William. Sure. Sure.

Let me take this a step further, I continued. I have tickets to Les Liaisons Dangereuses next Tuesday, and Id be pleased to have you as my guest. Where was I getting this stuff from?

Uh Sure. Sure.

But William explained hed be flying back from a mediation in Ottawa that afternoon, so he wasnt sure what time we could meet up.

No problem, I said. Why dont you call me when you land and well take it from there. Well catch a bite to eat before the show if that works.

Williams plane touched down from Ottawa in plenty of time, and he was waiting in front of the bank machine when I stepped out of my office building that evening.

Yes, he was tall. Over six feet I guessed, with the chest and carriage of a disciplined soldier. His straight, fine hairsuch as was leftwas greying, and he had a neatly cropped, blondish beard. Laugh lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes.

Genevieve Chornenki. I put out my hand.

Pleased to meet you, he said.

We shook hands, and I felt a tiny thunk, as if a missing puzzle piece moved into place. Then we headed off to dinner and the play.

Fifteen months later, we were married.

Years later, William said that he found my initial handshake comical. But you know what impressed me? he said.

No. What?

At intermission, you said, Excuse me. Im going into the ladies to take out my contact lenses. And off you went.

So?

You came out wearing glasses.

The little red ones?

Yeah.

I remember those.

And when you did that, I thought to myself, Wow! Thats one self-confident woman.

Fooled you, didnt I?

Hello, my friend. You want to have some kebab? Very, very nice. Very, very good.

The scent of roasting meat on Istiklal Caddesi. A balding kebab man outside his restaurant. Inside, through an open window, a mountain of meat rotating on a spit. With a metre long knife, he shaved off a ribbon and dangled it in front of Nicholas who rode in his fathers arms. Pudgy hands grabbed the gift. Into the mouth. Mmmm

Good. Very good. Yes? You want more?

A nod. More.

You like it?

More!

The laughing man offering kebab. The laughing boy devouring it.

Jeez, William, I whispered, The kids eating a kilo of free meat. Wed better make sure we come back here to buy dinner.

We were in Istanbul with soon-to-be-two Nicholas, and I was living out a promise Id made to myself while recovering from surgery. When I was well, we would go places to indulge the eyes. Soak up sights and sites: archeology, textiles, statues, rivers, gorges, grasslands, forests Somehow I would find the money and make the time. Priorities had been reordered.

The previous year, Nicholas ate his first sand on a beach in southern Crete. We sat on an ancient threshing floor high up a craggy hill with sheep bells tinkling in the distance. We explored clove-scented Minoan tombs at Armeni and purchased belts on leather lane in Chania. Now, we would see people and places in Turkey.

In our Istanbul hotel room, Nicholas discovered the light switch. Up, light. Down, dark. Up, light He stood on the sofa endlessly flicking the control, revelling in his new-found omnipotence.

OK. Thats enough. Bedtime.

We helped Nicholas into his pajamas and sang an impromptu verse about Weavus the dinosaur who had plates on her back and a tummy-tum-tum. Then William draped a towel over the lampshade.

Hey! I said. Why did you do that?

Cut down the light.

Obviously. But why?

Help him get to sleep.

Oh, please! When my brother-in-law was a kid he could fall asleep in a room of yakking adults and a blaring television set.

That was then. This is now.

But its bloody dark in here. Take that towel off.

Wont be long.

I snapped my book shut.

Spoken like a man with perfect vision. I, on the other hand, cant read a damn thing in this light.

Within six months of my retinal surgery, the vision in my left eye had become distorted, and in less than two years it plummeted to 20/200. In other words, what someone like William could see at two-hundred feet, I could see with my left eye only if I were as close as twenty feet. Increasingly, I had trouble judging distances and depth, and reading was a chore, especially in poor light.

The cause wasnt immediately obvious. Was it scarring, swelling, orGod forbidanother detachment? I had a collection of tests: a visual field test, a macular function test, and another nameless one where fluorescent dye was injected into my arm so the blood flow in the retina could be traced.

Good news. My left eye had developed a cataract. The lens that the retinal surgeon originally saved had been exposed to air during the first operation and became cloudy as a result. Opaque, impenetrable material now sat at the entrance to my left eye, right in my line of sight. The cataract blocked and scattered light, causing distortion and glare. Removing the clouded lens and replacing it with an artificial one would fix things. Cataract surgery was well established and safe.