I Can See Clearly Now (the scratch is gone) 🎶

plus books I read in 2022

Hi, it’s me.

How was your holiday? Did you go skiing? Lay on a beach? Stay home and Netflix? Do you have family drama? Are YOU the family drama? 🤣

I miss this about working in an office — the lost productivity on Mondays after vacation because we’re all catching up with each other in between email triage and voicemail messages.

Anyway, my vacation was great. Well mostly. Three out of four Zugs were sick at various times in December, including one case of COVID. I’m now the only Zug who hasn’t had COVID, but I had a cough so violent I peed my pants several times a day for a week. Super fun.

I watched the entire “Harry & Meghan” docuseries on Netflix the day I was sick in bed.

I also scratched my eyeball and had to make an emergency eye appointment. I wasn’t doing anything exciting or dangerous when this happened — just lying in bed and the next thing I know my thumbnail sliced across my eye like an Exacto knife. 

The eye doctor squeezed me in that afternoon and announced it was a superficial wound. Great news! He told me to come back in four days for a follow-up, and to clear me for wearing contact lenses again. On Friday I went back, and just as he suspected, declared, “As if it never happened!”

The sketch my eye doctor made, showing the position of my scratch.

I’ve been fixated on eye health for most of my life. I’m basically blind without corrective lenses, and even though many people have encouraged me to get LASIK surgery, I’m too scared. What if something goes wrong? What if surgery creates new problems? My otherwise healthy grandma who lived to be 96 suffered from Macular Degeneration, and my irrational mind incorrectly connected this disease to what happens when you get LASIK surgery. Logically I know these things aren’t connected, but you can’t talk my irrational mind out of it. I’ve tried.

After getting my first pair of Strawberry Shortcake glasses in the second grade, I remember watching the parade of trees marching by through the backseat window of our car as we drove home from the optometrist.

“The trees have individual leaves on them,” I said quietly. How long had I seen the world as an impressionist watercolor?

I think this might be how I saw the world until I was seven years old. Image by Prawny from Pixabay.

Back at my doctor a couple weeks ago, I asked, “How does it work? It’s not like you can put a bandaid on an eyeball. How did it heal itself?” He told me the eye generates new cells every day that work their way from the inside to the surface of the eye, then the cells sluff off in tears or blinking. The journey takes about four days, which is how he knew my eye would heal itself by Friday.

I sat there a moment with my Thinking Face on, which Bryan tells me looks like Resting Bitch Face. I don’t think the doctor noticed my Thinking Bitch Face, though, because it was only a split second, but in that moment I had a strange but familiar thought:

Well isn’t God a show-off!

And then I laughed at myself (on the inside, of course, to avoid a side-eye from the doctor) because I don't normally say things like that about God. I’m not the kind of person who walks around saying things like, “Look at those mountains – isn’t God wonderful?” or “Look how God brought the rain today so our garden could be nourished!” or “Dear Jesus, I could really use a parking spot right now!” I don’t even think like that in my head.

My people come from Germany, England, and Sweden, where it’s cold and dark. They settled in Minnesota, where the snow is measured in feet. I’m only two generations removed from the Great Depression – my grandparents went through it in their 20’s. Also, I'm a GenX Virgo.

All this to say, I come by my pragmatic, non-flowery “shit needs to get done” world view honestly.

Wearing my infamous Strawberry Shortcake glasses, probably 1980. And yes, that is a carpeted kitchen you see there.

Knowing this about myself, I spent the next split-second wondering, where did that come from?! Who is this person praising God willy-nilly for creating eyes that heal themselves when the eye was simply doing its job? Then I remembered: I’m re-reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott where she says this all the time about God being a show-off.

It’s kinda catchy. 

Lately I’ve felt like I’m waking up from a long nap with the grogginess still wearing off. On Christmas Eve, Holly from Release & Gather asked, “What miracles have you experienced this year?” I don’t know? Have I been awake enough to recognize a miracle when I see it? I’ve heard there are “functioning alcoholics,” and I think I might be a “functioning sleepwalker.” It’s possible I’ve been barely holding it together.

Three years into a pandemic I feel mentally and spiritually numb, but I think I’m coming out of it. As I wrote the story of my scratched eye, this lyric shuffled into my head and I started to hum the tune: “I can see clearly now, the rain has gone.” Curious about how my subconscious brain works, I looked up the lyrics to the full song and thought, “Well, this seems a little on the nose.”

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone

I can see all obstacles in my way

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

It's gonna be a bright (Bright), bright (Bright) Sun-shiny day

It's gonna be a bright (Bright), bright (Bright) Sun-shiny day

I think I can make it now, the pain is gone

All of the bad feelings have disappeared

Here is the rainbow I've been prayin' for

It's gonna be a bright (Bright), bright (Bright) Sun-shiny day

In response to Holly’s question, I think maybe my scratched eye was the miracle of 2022, arriving in the nick of time as an inciting metaphor to get me off my ass and start living outside my head a little. I’m looking forward to less darkness in 2023 – perhaps I’ll make this my theme song to keep on track with that. 

Anyway, that’s how my year wrapped up. What are you looking forward to this year? 

Until next time,

Jen

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News + Notes

1. I started a new job yesterday! I’ll tell you more about it next week, plus how I spent my time while unemployed. Make sure you’re subscribed!

2. We watched a bunch of movies over our two-week vacation. Have you seen any of these?

   • Aftersun (Bryan + our son loved it, I thought it was depressing)

   • The Fabelmans (entertaining in the moment, but forgettable)

   • The Whale (great acting, but I’m not sure what it was about)

   • The Royal Tenenbaums (catching up on old Wes Andersons with the teens)

   • Portrait of a Lady on Fire (French film with subtitles, my son picked this one)

   • She Said (loved this, but I love investigative journalism stories in general)

   • Glass Onion (entertaining popcorn movie, loved it)

   • Jack Ryan, Season Three (not a movie, but we binged all eight episodes in one day 🫠 )

3. I read some great books in 2022 (see book covers below). Ask me anything! Tell me what you read! I love talking about books. Here are some stats:

   • 22 books total; six books by authors of color; two books centering LGBTQ characters; four-ish memoirs; two books written by friends!

   • Favorites: The Guncle, The Seed Keeper, Hell of a Book, and The Only Good Indians. Dave Grohl’s book was also delightful and I’m now obsessed with him.

   • Didn’t love: Where the Crawdads Sing (didn’t understand the hype), Weather Girl (didn’t even finish it), and Just Giving (too dry and academic, didn’t finish, read Decolonizing Wealth instead).

   • The Color of Law is a dense book but an invaluable history lesson in how the government sponsored segregation and the oppression of Black Americans by systemically denying them the opportunity to own property and live in certain neighborhoods. I highly recommend it as part of your ongoing DEI education. I listened to the 2nd half via audio book, which I enjoyed more than reading it.

Ask me anything! Tell me what you read! I love talking about books!