Jwisloski, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, will hold the keeper’s hand/paw today as he—the keeper, awaits word on the timing of tomorrow’s surgery to address the damage done to his field of vision by the insidious long- term force of gravity.
It is one thing for gravity to have made it more challenging for the keeper to get up out of the recliner, or to think twice about bending over to pick up a dropped item, but it is quite another for his forehead to slip down like an old window shade, causing him to live with the sensation of looking at the world from under the bed.
As he puts himself in the hands of the UW/VA surgeons, the keeper hastens to proclaim—with Mother’s Day fast approaching, that he does not blame his dear old mother for his vision problem, even though it is clearly her genetic fault.
When the anesthetic kicks in, the keeper hopes he has dreams of what a wonderful woman his mother was, and how she handed off the ability to “see” the world positively, albeit with some restriction at the upper reaches of things.
The keeper offers a pre-op Mother’s Day toast, to the memory of his mother, and to his true love Phyllis: “Here’s looking at you, kid–all of you, and not just from the neck down.”
