My life became two parts on March 14, 1985, when my car spun out of control and I suffered a terrible closed head injury causing me now to mark life's events with before the accident and after. I awoke to discover there were many things I didn't remember about my life before March 14. The people I recognized as well as the ones I didn't -- my immediate family and my then-new husband -- tried to explain it all to me. I listened and nodded and, many times, fell asleep. My weight dropped to 105 (a brain requires thousands of calories a day to heal) and, at 5’9”, made me look Olive Oyle-esque. On top of everything else, nerve damage to my left eye, gave me double vision. I saw two of everything, which made my world a little dizzying, until one of my doctors put a prism in my left eyeglass lens. With the prism, my vision was normal, but for others looking through my glasses, things were multiplied by three, four, five... I used it for a few years until my eye trained itself to see singly again. Seeing things differently has, figuratively, been the cause of many arguments, accidents and wars throughout history. Maybe a prism of some sort would be all that is needed to see a single resolution. I’m hoping to use my single vision focus while learning to surf. I sometimes give up when I get discouraged, but I need to “train” my vision (aka attitude) to stay positive and, during my surfing trip, possibly stand on a surf board in the ocean. I’ve now been living in part two longer than I lived in part one of my life. I've come to understand and appreciate life's delicate balance; the same sort of balance necessary to ride a wave.
I leave for my surf trip on March 14!
