Sunday, November 13, 2011

About the Suit that Didn't Fit

Miracles happen everyday. Often we are so distracted, so consumed with our daily cares, with our long-term goals and objectives, that we miss the most vibrant occurrences before our eyes. When your vision is focused on the elusive "somewhere," we forget what is here and now. We forget to listen to our inner voice.

This story began when I purchased a ravishing mint-green Tahari suit, discounted to quite a reasonable price at an outlet. Growing up in a financially strapped household, I had long learned to pick up varieties of apparel on sale and finding a use for them later on. This classically tailored, sartorial wonder had the workmanship worthy of a designer label and I was ecstatic at my purchase. Of course, it didn't hurt that I had an excellent seamstress whose hands were magical. Her creations were ash rose chiffon, lime green satin, and champagne silk, to name a few (none of which were for me.) She only did my alterations.

I called her and discovered that she had given up sewing for the past year. Disappointed, I asked why and the culprit was cataracts, which blurred her vision and she is now unable to thread a needle. As I hung up the phone, I said a silent prayer for her, a woman whose identity was defined her ability to stitch and sew. I wondered what she would do next.

Then I thought of my mother. My mother was under the care of one of the most renowned opthamologists in the state, and her appointment was in November. (It was currently March). I had a nagging feeling, an uncanny insistence that she needed to see the physician earlier, but since he was so esteemed, his earliest available appointment was nine months later. I had repeatedly tried to move her appointment up, to no avail. On a whim, I called his office again. Apparently, there was a cancellation a few minutes before and I scheduled an appointment for my mother the following week.

On her visit, she was diagnosed with close angle glaucoma and was in immediate danger of losing her vision. Apparently, the pressure build-up in her eyes had increased so dramatically and quickly in the past few months that there was no possibility for the eye surgeon to predict it. She had been experiencing blurry vision, headache, and nausea, but she just thought it was a bad winter healthwise. We had no idea it was caused by glaucoma.

She was promptly scheduled for emergency laser surgery in the next few days. My mother, being one of a relaxed nature, had wanted to know if the surgery could wait until after Easter. My surgeon's response was "Don't blame me if you go blind."

Post-surgery, she emerged bright-eyed and luminous. And I am forever thankful to that inner voice, that intuition, the guiding spirit which insisted on making that fateful phone call. For once, I am aware of what was averted.

That's the funny thing about intuition. It inevitably binds you to those you love, despite distance and time, awakening you to any potential danger they may face. And you find that you are never alone; they are always with you. Perhaps that is the true miracle, how human emotion spans any geographical length and all barriers of reason, to be united to the source and the recipient of love.

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