This morning started out as every Monday starts, get up, doom scroll for an hour, take a shower, drink a smoothie and go to work. Simple. Instead of a shower, I chose the bath and maybe this was the instigator of all my trouble, because I suddenly started experiencing flashing lights in the peripheral vision of my right eye. This lasted for about 15 seconds and then there seemed to be a lot of floating debris clouding my vision. I wasn’t panicking, but the thought that I could suddenly go blind occurred to me, so I hurried out of the bath, got dressed and made a desperate call to my eye doctor. An hour later my husband was instructing me to put my seatbelt on for the 10th time, with the kind words “I don’t want you thrown into the windshield, so put on your belt!” Petulantly, I complied and we were off to the doctor’s office.
After “puffing” air into both eyes, scanning them with some sort of machine and then dropping stinging drops of hell into both eyes to dilate them, I waited patiently for the doctor to tell me I was going blind and would need surgery to correct it. While waiting, I mentally went through my bank account deducting what I was sure would be a $10,000 dollar bill not covered by my $12,000 dollar insurance deductible. After the doctor finished thoroughly examining my eyes, he told me that I was fine, and he was kind about it. No torn retina, no big cataract, just old age…. He mentioned the floaters would eventually migrate south (much like my breasts) and would hardly be noticeable (again, much like my breasts). I also pointed out the large stye on the left eye, but because of my droopy eyelids, it mostly covered the stye like a lowered window shade. He just nodded and suggested warm, moist heat. I suppose there is an advantage to droopy eyelids under some circumstances.
I settled my bill and waIked over to tell my husband the good news. “Welcome to senior citizenship” he chuckled. I didn’t laugh.
He opened the door for me then climbed into his side of the truck and proceeded to rummage through his truck. I stared at him with a questioning look until he handed me a large pair of dark glasses to keep the sun from burning my eyeballs. My look was complete.
“Where do you want to eat?” he asked, as I thought about the options available at 10:47 AM. I popped off a couple of names but noticed that he never turned his head in my direction. I knew where we were headed. We pulled into the Olive Garden and stopped. “I think they’re open” he stated, looking around at about ten cars parked in the lot. I didn’t see any blinds up and suggested that maybe they weren’t quite open yet. “Well, I need to gas up the truck anyway.” We pulled away and headed for the gas station. After filling the truck, we found our way back to the Olive Garden at 11:01 and proceeded to park the truck. We walked across the parking lot and got in line behind the rest of the gray haired people assembled at the locked doors. A young blond haired girl opened the doors and we all crowded in line. We stood behind a bald man with eyes tattooed on the back of his head. I got the joke but felt it was a bit petty of me to wish the tattoo artist had done a little better job. It was a one color job (blue), and felt very one dimensional. The fold at the bottom of his neck did resemble a mouth and I wondered if his wife had been the instigator of this misadventure. My husband snorted and ducked his head. When we finally shuffled inside, there was a jaunty 1940’s big band song playing and I could feel the urge to do the “Lindy Hop”. The hostess greeted us at the front, took our name and we moved over to the side to wait. I overheard her asking a younger waiter why they were putting the mats out because it wasn’t raining and she felt they were a “death trap” and with this crowd, it was probably true. A young waitress called our name and walked us through the restaurant towards a back room. For a young girl, she walked especially slow and I wondered if it was for our sake. We finally found a table near the back of the room. I took my large black sunglasses off and laid them on the table, looking around at the clientele. I calculated how much time I had before the waiter would be over and decided to make a quick run for the bathroom. With Dean Martin crooning to the background of my life, I stepped into the first stall. Glancing to my left I saw a neatly folded pair of flowered cotton underwear sitting on top of the toilet paper dispenser. I didn’t ask myself why, I just moved on to the next stall, envisioning my life as a sitcom with the perfect accompanying music, the Glen Miller Band.
I walked back towards our table and got lost, even after making a mental note that I needed to turn where the wall of wine bottles sat. Nope, apparently there is more than one wall of wine in Olive Garden. The bald man with the eyes tattooed on the back of his head smiled at me as I passed by for the 3rd time. How hard can it be? I finally found our table, sat down and told my husband that Olive Garden is where “youth goes to die”. It’s the place you go because you can eat lunch for $10.00 and all the waiters will ask if you know how to use the gizmo at the table to pay your bill. They will mention that there is no shame in not knowing because “nobody” knows how to use it and this is code for "old". Yes, I recognize myself in the mirror.
Several years ago I owned a really great restaurant and it wasn’t great because I cooked the food, it was great because OTHER people cooked the food, my daughter, for one. I spent years being an insufferable food and coffee snob, but now the only person I try to hide my Olive Garden trips from is my daughter. She probably doesn’t care, but she did look mortified when she caught me in the aisle at Walmart buying a frozen apple pie for Thanksgiving one year, so I try to hide my slide into decline from her.
My husband and I ramble back out of Olive Garden and across the parking lot as I put my dark sunglasses on. He helps me into the truck and we head for home. The floaters are clouding my vision and for once, I don’t care because I’m not going blind and that’s something to be grateful for.