Wisdom of the One-Eyed Owl

    We stayed in a room on a pier where I could lie in bed and watch the sunset or sit on the deck with a glass of wine.  The waves lapped under our unit as the tide came in.  The loons trilled to one another across the bay at dawn and dusk. They always make me cry. The double rainbow the first morning we were there made me shoulders drop, feeling nature giving me the all-clear, thumbs up, reminders of so much more and all the right things.  In so many ways our three-day trip was like a drug to my tired soul and yet, I was reminded that shit carries on.  

    We arrived in the rain on a Wednesday evening.  As I took a deep breath of sea air in my husband announced, "I forgot my CPAP machine."  To which I nearly slapped myself because I had an inkling he might forget.  My husband and I have recently vowed to heed those faint interior voices. Give them amplifiers.  Notice and respond.  But I didn't.   Without that machine my husband would snort and snore, wake and sleep, rumble and toss and turn keeping us both wide-eyed all night.  Gratefully our friend met us halfway with the machine.  The next morning as I took a bite of my scrambled eggs and we planned a day at the botanical gardens, I looked to the left and saw a flash of light in my left eye.  Like a lightening bolt.  Which can't be normal.  And could indicate a stroke.  So I called my ophthalmologist, two hours away, who met who saw me the next day and diagnosed.  "Your eyes are in great shape overall. But you have a vitreous detachment."  The jelly-like substance in my eye, called the vitreous humor, detached from the retina and was banging up against it as it wiggled around every time I moved my eyes.  It's common as we age I learned.  But weirdly I had been thinking about eyes recently.  My right eye has more floaters than it usually does.  I was debating making an appointment to check that out.   And, I was just listening to my grad school friend, a macular degeneration specialist at the University of Georgia, give a talk on eye health.  Those little voices. 

    Yesterday, we wandered home, not as rested as we had hoped.  We stopped at a fall festival we stumbled into along the roadside.  Another thing my husband and I have told ourselves is stop everywhere while we travel cause you may never travel there again.  This came out of our regret for not stopping and standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona.  Who doesn't stop there?  And so we stopped and wandered around this local festival where vendors sold handmade silver earrings, maple syrup, and hot apple cider. All the while little lightning bolts shot off in my left eyeball.  And then floaters began.  Which could indicate my retina is torn but probably not.  Bodily things going wrong make me feel old and crazy.  And out of control.  Such thoughts commandeered my mind about the time I noticed this gal, a saw-whet owl, staring directly at me in a way I couldn't ignore. Pulling me in to her, that wiise old one-eyed owl.  Her keeper told me she was rescued from the road where she was hit by a car.  Native to Maine, I felt that owl's embrace.

    There is so much in life I need to pay attention to more, see, observe, take note of.  Little voices in my head, places to spontaneously visit along the way, intuitions about myself and others.  This three and a half ounces owl tethered to a log by a naturalist, is my reminder.  As are the loons, the magical loons.  And the double rainbows.  And the tidal water whispering under my bed as I slept at night.