UCLA Journal of Radiation Oncology Issue 4 - Flipbook - Page 31
Photo Credit: Killari Hotaru
UCLA RADIATION ONCOLOGY JOURNAL
IF I WEAR GLASSES, WILL YOU BE ABLE TO SEE ME?
When I was a child, always my aunt stood in the center
of rooms, buttoned into tennis whites or an off-theshoulder dress, her red-tipped fingers tilting back a
long-stemmed wine glass, her laughter a hoot. I
thought instead of working, she chose long hours at the
gym or shopping, driven from place to place by my
uncle in their luxury American car. My aunt listened to
books on tape from the library and signed birthday
cards with erratic loops. She made her way past the
room’s furniture without help and looked in the
direction of the person speaking. My brother told me
she was reading lips, a transposition. I haven’t
inherited her condition, which runs in families, but
even so, I strain with lenses and I have almost no night
vision at all. Labs precisely calibrate my glasses, a
costly process taking months. When technology dulls
a problem, it isn’t a problem. “I’ve never seen a
prescription like yours, har-de-har-har!” People
imagine I’m curious, squinting at hello, leaning in as if
to kiss the document in my hands. A doctor once
diagnosed me as ‘clumsy,’ not a medical condition but
a scold. At night, I’ve pointed my car at a direction I
believed to be a road, just as my aunt used to turn
toward my voice. When I truly can’t see, I cry out.
Since I watched my aunt I’ve learned some cries are
like talismans, some kinds of laughter, too. They guard
against all the ways it can get worse. You learn to feel
your way: a page of text, a conversation, a
city, a museum of impressionist paintings. I’m more attentive
to shifts in shadow and light than I used to be, when
my eyes were better. My mind performs the
calibrations now. Are you still having trouble? Maybe
I’m not recognizable at all.
-Erin Hoover
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