don't mess with your eyeballs...ever.

In an attempt to keep up with the age of innovation, I decided to have my eyes fixed.  Last summer, I made the big step of getting Lasik eye surgery.  On recommendation of a couple of my co-workers, I chose to have the procedure done in Kingston, Ontario, also it is much less expensive and only 45 minutes from my house.

After a pre-op appointment and all of the financial logistics were taken care of, the big day came.  My mother came with me to drive me home (and she kept insisting on moral support, but I am a big girl and really didn't need it...or so I thought).  

I remember when I was diagnosed with lack-worthy eyesight.  I was 20 years old, lived in Boston, and was pregnant with Luke.  My friend Michelle came to visit me and we were driving down Commonwealth Ave. when  I jokingly picked up her glasses and put them on.  Instead of my expectation of having everything magnified ten fold like I was looking through a set of magnifying glasses, I was welcomed with a pleasureful crisp view of Boston, it was absolutely amazing.  I can't even describe it, my eyes were bad?!?!?  I didn't want to give Michelle her glasses back.  I immediately went to an eye doctor, who proudly explained to me that he knew why I was there.  He explained that my pregnancy slowed me down and made me read more, which made me realize I needed glasses...ummmm ok.  I got to pick out new frames and went for a set of sexy librarian dark framed glasses.  Through the years I've experimented with many different eye glass frames, styles, etc.  It became my identity.  It's crazy how much you can stand out from the crowd with a brazenly awesome pair of eyeglasses.

Back in Canada, I am getting ready to have my surgery.  There was myself and two others (a woman and man) that were scheduled for the same surgery at the same time.  We were brought from a bright, cheery, waiting room and shuffled into a tight little elevator.  Next, we were shown into a dimly lit waiting room and told to put surgical caps over our heads.  Kind of awkward, we all looked like factory workers.  Prior to the surgery I was offered anti-anxiety medicine, which itself scares the crap out of me, but I wasn't scared of eye surgery.  I already had a c-section, a breast reduction, and many psychotic ex-boyfriends, eye surgery would be a piece of cake.  We waited in the waiting room for 20 minutes or so, striking up small conversation.  The lady was nervous and told me that if I started screaming during my surgery, she was "out of here", the guy was quiet and didn't converse at all.  

The surgical assistant came out of the operating room and called my name.  Here goes nothing.  I walk in and crawl up on the table.  They ask how I feel and I feel great!  For the zillionth time, they explain the procedure step by step.  The doctor comes in and introduces himself.  He starts to show me his tools which look they came off the workplace of a medieval torture chamber.  "I'd rather not" was my response to looking at his tools for slicing my eyeballs..."but thanks".  He puts a spring in my eyelid...so far so good.  Then he takes a round metal thingy and explains that he is using it to open my eye wider so he can expose my cornea so will enable him to make a small incision.  Now, I have pain drops in my eye, so the eye is numb, but the orbit around my eye...not so much.  He is explaining to me that my eyes are kind of small so I'm going to feel some pressur....OUCH!!!  He is pressing this thing around my eye hard!!!!  I start deep breathing and suddenly am feeling slightly panicky.  I am going to my happy place...happy place..."hummmm...hummmmm".  When I was having my C-section, my midwife told me that if I was feeling scared while not being able to move any of my body parts (paralysis is slightly scary), I could just sing.  So I reverted to the old method of calming myself and start singing angel from Montgomery by John Pryne.  The surgical tech starts laughing and asks if I want a stress ball to squeeze.  I ask for two.  When is he going to stop pressing down??  I am double armed with stressballs and am pumping away like crazy to the beat of angel from Montgomery, when he finally stops pressing.  He explains that I can look at the laser, it will automatically go off if I move my eyeball....great.  It smells like burning hair (did someone bring my hairdryer?), and a few minutes later...waahlah!  The second eyeball was much easier now that I know what he is doing, I left the room shaky, but intact.  

The lady in the waiting room is waiting for me to say something.  I mutter "well....that was interesting...", it was the best I could do.  The pain meds are still in full effect, so I have no pain.  They give me a set of terminator style sunglasses and instruct me not to take them off, open my eyes, or rub them.  Not rubbing them is no problem since I'm starting to feel like Mike Tyson punched me in both of my eyeballs.  Mom and I get in the car and start exiting the parking garage.  The parking attendant asks mom if she needs directions, she says "yes...ummm we are going to Alex Bay?", he says "huh?", she says "La Fargeville?", he says "ummmmm, lady, your in Canada, those places are in the states, I have no idea where those places are...".  That was the highlight of my day.  By the time we make it to the border, I am in full effect crisis.  My eyes feel like I had a major poking from a woodpecker.  Even the border patrol agent told me to immediately put my sunglasses back on after asking me to take them off.  What I didn't realize was that I had blood spots all over the whites of my eyes.  I get home, lay down, and recover...after a few days.

One thing I never realized about getting lasik eye surgery is how much it effects your identity.  For quite a while, I just didn't trust my eyes, I only trusted my glasses which are now obsolete to me.  I didn't need the glasses?  Why is this a surprise to me?  You mean I can walk into target and buy a pair of sunglasses off the shelf??  Strange... It took me awhile to get over the horror that I let someone do that to my eyes.  What if they messed up???  What if the blood spots didn't go away?  They did.  I am used to it now...a new me.  Back to taking my eyes for granted and armed with a story to tell.  Would I do it again?  Nope.

Glasses

No Glasses!

red lobster boy

I worked with Mark at Samaritan, he was in the accounting department.  We met at a meeting that I was taking minutes at, I couldn't get over the 17 year age difference enough to ever consider a relationship with him but we had great Seinfeld-like conversations.  He had two sons he was raising alone, Mark Jr. and Nick.  He brought them into the Hut, where I held a second job, and I waited on them frequently.  Mark Jr. was about to graduate high school and was really quiet, Nick was a football star, way to cool to converse.

Whenever I come across someone painfully shy, I seem to always feel the need to take them on sort to speak, bring them out of their shell.  This trait seems to usually result in two things, either discovering an awesome personality or inviting a stalker.

I left the hospital to attend college full-time, so my visits with Mark's family became very rare until one day at college when I came across Mark Jr.  He was on campus, slumming around, waiting for his dad to get off work to come pick him up.  I offered him a ride home rather than wait four hours and put out the free standing offer of a ride here and there when he needed.

The next time I see Mark Jr., I am on my way out to lunch.  Naturally, I offer to bring him along, he is quick to tell me that he doesn't have money so I offer to buy his lunch.  We go to Coleman's and sit only to have the pleasant surprise of my Grandmother being sat simultaneously.  I am thinking "Oh great, she is going to think I'm dating this kid.", she asks us to join her and we comply.  After lunch, Gram picks up the check and gives Mark the wink, oooh boy.

The next week, I see Mark Jr. again, he approaches me and asks me if I want to go out to lunch again, and I agree.  We get in my car and start towards Arsenal Street.  "Where do you want to eat?", I ask.  "Red Lobster!", he replies.  I explain to him that I have class in 40 minutes and Red Lobster is probably not going to fly, so he follows with a request for Pizza Hut, which is great because I get a discount.  We are seated quick and start looking at the menu.  He says "I want ALOT of pizza!!!", I am like "ok, cool.", we ordered a large stuffed crust super supreme.  Mark adds breadsticks and wings and I am thinking this boy is hungry.  Midway through our meal Mark explains that he needs to go call his dad to arrange his ride for after school.  He then says something that is the question heard around the world.  He says "Do you have a quarter?".  Huh?  Did he just ask for a quarter????  With the smile pasted on my face, all I can squeak out is "uh huh..".  The rest of our lunch consumed in silence (since I did 99% of the talking most of the time anyway).

This boy.  Thiiiiisss boyyyyyy.  He asks me to lunch.  He wants to go to Red Lobster?  He wants ALOT of pizza?!?!?!  He does not have a freaking quarter????  Yes, a learning lesson.  What did I learn?  Avoid Mark.    The term "Red Lobster Boy" was coined, and I never spoke to him again.  Probably not the most mature way to handle this situation, but it felt right at the time and I am sticking by it.

happiness defined

whose your favorite aunt?

Where did this phrase come from?  We are up to the magic number of seven children between the four DeMarse sisters.  We torture each other's kids with this stressful question...they are learning.  Just answer with the name of the Aunt that is asking...duh.  Let me tell you where this phrase came from.

Luke was the first.  Born to me (oh...how lucky I am).  Luke is the first so he had a very spoiled life early on.  Spoiled rotten by my sisters, cuddled, coddled, dressed up, redressed up, that poor child.  I would develop rolls of pictures only to find that Jaime had taken a picture of Luke as a baby with a sign next to his head that looked like a thought cloud that said "I love my Aunt Jaime!"...but this is NOT where the phrase came from.

My sisters realized early on how fun it would be to get back at each other if Luke would say that one was the favorite over the other.  Tracy started this.  She watched Luke a lot in his early years, when he was beginning to form words that were understandable she would spend hours upon hours training him.  She would just repeat over and over "Whose your favorite Aunt?  Aunt Tracy!  Whose your favorite Aunt?  Aunt Tracy!".  He would suck on his hands, listening to her...saying nothing.  She was relentless.

As a baby, Luke slept with me every night.  I feared he would stop breathing, even when he was 2...then 3.... I would sleep with a constant awareness to his chest rising and falling.  When Luke started speaking...it was the end of all quiet.  Before this...he didn't talk much at all.  Matter of fact, my earliest memories of Luke talking happened on a quiet night at two in the morning.  I woke to find Luke sitting up in bed chanting...at first it was hard to understand...and then...I realized the chant was almost zen like.  He was rocking back and forth whispering in his tiny baby voice "Whose your favorite Aunt?  Aunt Tracy!  Whose your favorite Aunt?  Aunt Tracy!  Whose your favorite Aunt?  Aunt Tracy!...", he was a child possessed.  It took me an hour to get him to stop and go back to sleep.  I thought of a zillion ways to kill Tracy!  Or...I could hold on to this and wait until Tracy had kids herself one day.  She did...and the competition was on.  It goes on and on...with every child that is born, it is the tradition when you first hold the baby in your arms to say "Whose your favorite Aunt?"

happiness defined

don't ever challenge the paper boy

We had matching sun dresses for every occasion.  Pretty pink with flowers, light yellow daisies, the style of the early eighties.  White strapped sandals, delicate, and petite.  My mother loved us to look like little girls sometimes despite our tomboy ways.  Our house on Gotham Street was typical of the time, we had an enormous tree in front of our house that kept guard.  A fateful day in the summer of 1979, Danielle and I were sitting out front of our house on the roots around the base of the big tree.  I loved those lazy summer days, the sun shining, the air smelling of cut grass, the neighborhood kids everywhere.  A small distance down the street our paperboy was making his way towards our house.  He yelled ahead for Danielle and I to get out of the way so he could get some air by riding his bike up the root of our tree.  I complied, rather quickly.  Danielle, not so much.  She stood her ground and refused to move, even decided to change her position from sitting to laying to cover more of the surface area of the tree root.  He said "I'll run over you!", she replied "This is my tree, and I'm not moving."  This was a game of chicken and no one backed down.  My mother must have heard her screaming, my sister had bicycle tracks across the waist of her new sun dress.  This is the best, most unbelievable part of this memory.  My mother, a quiet, hippie type woman, peace, love, and music...came out in a rage and spanked the paperboy.  Yes, she spanked him.  I am not sure at that point if I had ever seen her lay a hand on anybody.  She was the essence of patience, a school teacher non the less, she dealt with terrible kids all the time.  Her patience was tried and tested, the result forever engraved in my mind, my startled four year old body stood rooted in the same spot that I retreated to when the paper boy initially demanded I move.  The only muscle I dared to move was my jaw as it slowly fell as I watched my mother take out, what seemed to be, years of fury on the paperboy's butt.  This story comes up every now and then during Thanksgiving when we get our family together, my mother frail, denies all...but I remember.

sneaker cat

My mom was funny about the gifts she bought for us.  She was not known for buying something on the fly to achieve a quantitative goal, she was more of a qualitative type of lady.  The gifts we received were well thought out, humorous, memorable, and most of the time, interesting.  Do you remember your first bicycle?  I do.  My first bike was pink.  It was a hand me down from my sister Danielle.  The only reason I remember it is because I remember the bike that Danielle received to enable her to hand me down the pink one.  It was Christmas, and she got a purple Huffy.  The handlebars were an enigma.  To this day, I have not seen a bike with handle bars shaped like Danielle's purple Huffy, they resembled the handlebars commonly seen on chopper style motorcycles.  Her Huffy had a banana seat, we spent many hours cruising around town, she drove, I rode.  I did everything Danielle told me to do.  It was my duty to listen to Danielle, follow Danielle, want to be like Danielle, and hope that she would get into trouble before it was time to spend the night at her friend's house so mom would punish her by making her bring me along.  When Danielle decided it was time for me to learn how to drive the pink bike, then it was time.  So...she taught me.  She taught me good, I learned quick.

Enough about the bikes, let's talk about sneaker cat.  For Christmas one year, mom got Danielle a new comforter.  The comforter had an image of a cartoon cat wearing sneakers tiled all over it.  This was dubbed "sneaker cat".  This blanket was almost as much a part of our family as each of my sisters were.

Like all other gifts, this one was chosen for it's uniqueness among a sea of solid colored bed spreads.  We all loved sneaker cat.  We fought over this blanket, it was part of our lives until it was worn to rags....literally.  It is funny how something made from cotton grown in someone's field could be turned into an object of extreme comfort, security, and happiness.  I don't know what became of sneaker cat, it was a part of our family for well over a decade, now...long gone. 

rainy days and opera music

When I was a young teenager, possibly 12 or 13 years old, my mother decided to transfer my sisters and I, from the public school system to a private Catholic school.  She said this was because she didn't like how rebellious we were becoming and the people we were choosing to hang around with and thus we made the switch.  I only spent one year at Holy Family, I was in the seventh grade.  It was an interesting time in my life, I knew very little about religion, absolutely zero about Latin and wasn't a very good student to boot.  I pretty much equated school with a means for socialization and could have cared less about the  educational opportunities that were offered to me.

I remember how very clever I felt when I first started at Holy Family.  The first thing I did was tell my mother that the price for lunches was $2.00, which gave me an extra $1.15 per day to spend however I wanted.  I immediately developed the appropriate crushes on the very few good looking mysterious boys in my class and was accepted into the social circles rather quickly.  I never had trouble making friends.  Sister Giovanni was my unofficial mentor.  She kept me in her classroom while the other students went to Latin and did her best to take me under her wing and get me caught up on the practices and prayers and other things that seemed to dumbfound me.  In an attempt to help me get antiquated with the place, she even arranged it so that I had a one time opportunity to say the announcements, pledge of allegiance, and morning prayer over the PA system one morning.  I was great until I got to the morning prayer, then I flubbed the words and inadvertently took the lord's name in vain, and that was the last time I was asked to do that.  I was completely oblivious to why people were looking at me funny for the entirety of that day.

Surprisingly, I enjoyed the religion classes, although it was the only subject I was failing.  The knowledge just wasn't there.  I began to love the stories, love Sister Giovanni, and even started to contemplate what life would be like joining the order.  My mother even stated often that my sisters and I were acting nicer, I am truly unsure of whether or not this is true, my mother is a lover of results and she may have psyched herself into thinking we were being nicer, but I think we were the same.

One of the most comforting memories I have from Holy Family goes a little like this:  Myself and two of my classmates decided to go for a long walk after school one day.  We walked up to Thompson Park and started to head home when it began to rain.  I shouldn't say rain, it was pouring.  The sky was getting ominously dark and we couldn't get home soon enough.  We were three young girls in our catholic plaid skirts, soaked hair pasted to our heads, a very sad sight.  A small white Nissan car pulled up to us and the passenger window slid down to reveal a familiar, heartwarming, smile.  It was a priest from Holy Family.  Although I don't remember his name, I remember a lot about him.  He was younger, very easy to talk to, and always happy.  We accepted his offer for a ride (these were the times that a priest was considered a safe adult).  We piled into his car and were welcomed with the delightful sounds of opera music and a toasty warm atmosphere.  He delivered each of us to our homes safe and sound.  I never forgot how inviting his car was, how much I loved the Opera music, and how thankful we were that day for a rainy day rescue.

Rainy days and Opera music was born to my life....always.

This picture is of the class I transferred into.  This was the entire seventh grade class, and that is Sr. Giovanni in the upper right hand corner.  My transfer happened post-picture day, so I am not in this picture.