At the Optometrist’s

          I wrapped both pairs of my glasses up in a dirty blue bandanna. When I got down the hill to the optometrist’s office I just handed the bulky cloth to the lady.
          She relocated here from Washington, too. 
          “What is your age?”
          “I—am—sixty.” I spaced the words out like the granite boulders along the carriage roads in the park.

          “I will be, too, next year!”
          She seemed too old to be living with her parents. She was smiley but unstable—a cat on a bookshelf. I could picture her screaming, easily. But I liked how she said “I love the Maine winters.”
          That's the thing nobody tells you about up here—it only gets better after the tourists leave. Winter is a hardship only in the sense that needlework, or Dostoevsky, is a hardship. Each storm is different from the last one, like the first page of a very good book.
          I was dilated and had to sit for 10 minutes. The doctor told me to relax. He said it twice, as if to make a point. I stared at the striped carpet squares, like giant Neapolitan coconut candies, each turned a different direction from its neighbor. The wall color was under-ripe banana, and the dark vinyl cove molding was like pen underlining done with a ruler. 
          The exam room door was open. I could hear the interviews.
          The first was a young male contact lens client. A lady told him only to wear them for four hours, to lubricate his eyes before a nap, not to shower with them in, never to sleep with them in, absolutely never to rub his eyes with them in (the lens will just absorb certain fats and solvents), and to call if his vision seems worse.
          I had stopped relaxing. I was physically cringing at what this boy would do not to be seen in glasses frames—such an aphrodisiac for me. The powerful eroticism of nerds! Gregory Peck in  “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Gary’s right index finger holding back the pages of a book.
          The next thing I heard was an older man interacting with the doctor.
           “Which is better: A ... or B?”
          I recognized in his replies my own refusal to simplify. After all, my life hadn't been simple. Why should I serve up something cleansed of the difficulty of its birth, finally resolved—thoroughly comprehended, after such struggle, accepted—bluntly binary.
           “B is a little bit better than A, but I wouldn’t say it’s a vast improvement.”
          Good for you!—faceless voice from the next room.
          This moment is now, this rectangular room with its soft yellow orbs of examination equipment lights, and I am the man bringing his glasses to the office in an old bandanna, my blood sugar eroding my retinas, my memories of my mother—younger than me, now.
          Life was a bell curve, and somewhere around 34 or 35—when I was still hiking the mountains in Acadia, still buying things because I was afraid I couldn’t be myself without them, still smoking on the back porch—I started heading back to the x axis.
          It’s a lot of experience. But I’m afraid it doesn’t do much good.
          The doctor came back into the room, and we talked about having my other eye done, and I said “Forget it.”
          “You're lucky it’s overcast—a good day to have your eyes dilated.”
          Jay-walking across Hancock and Elm Street I had to hurry to avoid a fast blue Subaru. I thought, God, it can't be Eleanor—but it was. She flew into her driveway, jumped out of the car and waved at me enthusiastically ... slim and tall like a model, her back still straight, the bones of her face perfect like Katharine Hepburn’s, and her silver hair carefully and tastefully arranged.
          She’s 94.
          I took Elm Street hill slowly. 
          I need to find an excuse to drop in on Eleanor again. She sees things quite clearly.