Yellow and Blue Make Green

Oct 7, 2010

Kelve drove me to and from the Holy Cross Eye Surgery Clinic today. He hasn’t accompanied me on any of these minor surgery trips before and so I had to coach him.

“Look, when I say that I feel well enough to go to my afternoon film class, your job is to say, no, Arta, I am taking your right home and tucking you in bed. And then you have to do it.”

With all of the best instructions I could give him, he still lost me in London Drugs. I thought I was following him since I needed to touch his shoulder so I didn’t veer of course. But I heard one of those announcements over the intercom about everything in the middle isle now being 75% off. I couldn’t help it that my feet travelled over there to check out what my eyes couldn’t see. He didn’t even notice the loss of pressure on his shoulder that my absence made.

And when I was talking to the druggist, I lost Kelvin, again. I zipped up and down the isles, going from isle 1 to isle 12, looking for him. Three times up and down and I couldn’t find him. When I was about ready to walk home he came out from the drug department himself and said, “It was supposed to be you sitting down in there, not me.”

I have no idea why I am still so fired up with energy. I haven’t been able to sleep since I came home. I think the adrenalin rush from the fear factor is still in me. I tried to relax, but it is hard not to be fearful when the only freezing is in your eye, it feels as though your eyes are open in the midst of some viscous material, and there is a white light piercing your iris.

I did go out in the neighbourhood tonight and walk up and down the sidewalks and alleys of Banff Trail, trying to tire myself out.

Now it is time to lay down whether I want to or not. I have to wait five minutes between each set of eye drops and I noticed that even though Katie Mallik was playing the best of CBC’s jazz, I was falling off to sleep. Oh, not when the Wailin Jenney’s were doing their set. That was so lovely that I found myself trying to sing along with the woman doing the bass of the trio.

Wierd.

I think, maybe, I still should have someone here, bossing me around instead of being on my own. Oh, where is Wyona when I need her?

I have a badge on my shirt – on the left side – a sign that it was the left eye to be done. I have a huge X on my forehead, a sign again that it was the left eye to be done. And that side of my face is yellow from the solution that was wiped there to clearn the area, a solution that was also swept back into my hair.

I wouldn’t care so much about that yellow skunk streak except I heard today that Greg is driving back to go to the Crescent Heights High School Reunion this week-end. I asked if he wanted a date. So how lucky is that for me.

I don’t mind what my cohort is going to think when I wear those huge dark sunglasses to the reunion, but the yellow streak through my hair? That is bothering me. When I couldn’t sponge it out (and since eyes are not allowed near any water for 2 weeks), I mixed up a blue rinse to dab on that side of my hair. Ringing in my ears was a little scripture I heard in the Rembrandt film last week: the Biblical words of King Solomon, "vanity of vanities, all is vanity." That was drummed into my as a child as well. Still, I put the devil’s warning behind me, I worked on that spot with the blue rinse, trying to get out of my hair what wouldn’t come with soap and water.

Looking at the spot more closely, and saw a gradual colour change. I also had flash into my mind what I learned when I was colouring a yellow sun and a blue sky in Grade I

Yellow and blue make green.

Guess I will have to live with in the name of getting a new lens today.

Love,

Arta