I’ve been thinking about this poem by Dylan Thomas. He wrote it for his father and meant it to be about dying but I’m using the line to moan about my eyesight and horrible and annoying and frustrating and irritating it is.
This is my second blog about it I know, and I won’t make a habit of it, but I went on a road trip last week around the East Coast and discovered just how bad it is when I’m away from familiar surroundings.
Here I know where everything is and in spite of frustrations and with a little help from my friends, I manage very well. But take me away from here, and that comfort goes.
Motels are not built to cater for people like me. Even allowing for poor eyesight, the lights are dim and the bathrooms are real traps unless you’re very very careful or have really good eyesight. Showers have shiny slippery floors, especially when wet, making it a combination of will and terror to have a shower. They haven’t heard of shower mats.
The toilets are all very low – and made me glad I had a higher one installed at home. This was not because of poor eyesight but I’d discovered when I went to vist my granddaughter how much more comfortable theirs was so I decided to get one too.
Ages ago at my request Kim installed hand grips on each side of the shower. At the time I had no idea that my eyesight was going to take a dive. Now I’m just thankful for my foresight.
I had two of my sons with me on the roadie so they acted as my eyes when I needed them. Think about it. I can’t read menus, have to peer at notices, at faces. Luckily the white stick is a good signal when crossing the road. Thanks to the drivers who stopped for me.
However, there were more (metaphorical) bright spots than dark ones. Me and my white stick walked from one end of the Tolaga Bay wharf to the other and back so I was very pleased, its quite a walk as you’ll know if you’ve been there.
I can see things at a distance a bit clearer than up close so was able to enjoy the scenery as we passed. All the names that roll off the tongue, Te Puia Springs, Tikitiki – the RSA cafe there makes a great cup of tea, includes a pot of boiling water without being asked, make the best spring rolls I’ve ever tasted and has a framed photo of Sir Apirana Ngata gazing benignly down on you while you sip tea, Hicks Bay where one of us loved surfing.
It was a combination of three different sets of memories and lots of questions of the whatever happened to so and so? variety.
The night he slept under the big Pohutukawa tree, the time he went to Prince Tui Teka’s tangi, the time she got stuck with a flat tyre and this woman came along and helped change it.
And of course Wairoa, the river, the places we all knew so well. The college, the bar where the river and sea meet, and dah dah, there’s still a bookshop on the Marine Parade.
Said kia ora to a few friends, met a new one, a Facebook friend. So now we’ve met in person. She lives just round the corner from where we lived back in the day.
And Mahia, still the most beautiful place on earth. We remembered swimming, gathering pipi, looking for paua shells, lying on the beach dreaming, reading.
Sure I’ll continue to rage against the dying of the light but there’s a light inside that can’t be dimmed and that’s memory, now happily loaded with another layer of new ones.
