Essay written for EnGL209, summer 2009

By Jennifer Maximenko

My Eyes

The elderly man and the young woman sit at the small wooden table in the tiny kitchen. They drink strong, black coffee from mismatched, ceramic mugs.

She wants to hear a story.

The man, absent-minded, touches his sagging face and then his short, white hair.

Alright, he says, I’ll tell you the story about my eyes.

She knows this story well. She loves it.

More than a few years ago, he begins, I was a young man. I was in love with a young woman. Emily, her name was Emily.

The thing that I loved most about this woman was the way she viewed the world. She saw the beauty in everything! Take that ant over there on the counter, eating that breadcrumb. Em would have described that ant as a precious, black pearl or something like that. The point is she could make you think that ant was the greatest thing that had ever been bestowed upon mankind.

And this is why I loved that young woman.

Me and Emily got married and had a son. Or, rather, it was the other way around. But that doesn’t really matter. My son is your father.

Are you following me?

She nods and cracks a lop-sided grin.

So, me and Emily raised our son.

We grew old together.

And do you know that woman never stopped seeing the beauty in everything? This one time, she went out to the back yard and plucked several blades of grass; she lined them up on this very table, in a neat, little row. She called me into the kitchen. Em spent about twenty minutes or so describing all the different shades and hues of green in each piece of grass. It was amazing. She made things come alive.

Emily was my eyes. Without her, I could see the beauty in nothing!

He chokes on his words. Tears flow out of his eyes, filling the crevasses in his skin.

She reaches over and dries her grandfather’s face with the sleeve of her shirt.

The tears stop and he says, when I was seventy, Emily died. She passed and I lost my eyes. Yes, my eyes were gone.

I saw the beauty in nothing!

                His granddaughter looks at him across the little wooden table. She grins her silly, lop-sided smile again. Only this time, her freckled face shows a hint of sadness.

Let me finish the story, he continues. The end is the best part. It’s about you.

When I turned seventy-five, I’d been without my eyes for five, long years. About a week before my birthday, your father calls me up and says, “Hey, Pops, what do ya want for your birthday?”

So, I told him. I want my eyes. You know, he told me I was crazy—losing my mind. He said that there was nothing wrong with my sight— says I could see just fine.

 He just didn’t get it.

A few days after that phone call, my son came over here. He brought his wife and daughter.

That was you. Do you remember?

Yes, she says, go on finish the story.

He sighs in a contemplative way and picks up the remainder of the story where he left off.  They brought me gifts and a cake. Everyone sang happy birthday and watched me open the presents. Do you know what your father gave me? A Blackberry! What the hell was I going to do with a Blackberry?

And your mother, she gave me a pair of designer reading glasses. She mentioned something about my eyes being bad. But I could read well enough.

I’d just wanted my eyes. They were gone and I couldn’t find them.

Now, I finally get to you, my dear granddaughter. You were the last one to give me a gift on my seventy-fifth birthday. You were about ten years old--a sweet, quiet little girl.

You handed me a piece of paper. It wasn’t even wrapped. On that paper was a sketch of Emily’s face. You had drawn it with a pencil. It was good. It looked real, like a photograph. You always had a lot of talent.

When I looked close at the picture—held it two inches in front of me-- I could see tiny blades of grass in the pupils of Emily’s eyes.

Then, you took my hand and led me over to this table, where a single daisy rested in a glass of water. And you had said, “Come with me Poppy. I’ll show you what I see.”

And that, my dear, is the story of how you found my eyes.