I’ve worn eye glasses for thirty years,
but today on a ferry ride home from the airport,
I took them off for a while.
The most amazing thing happened:
I couldn’t see.

The world was soft and out of focus.
I’d been invited to Renoir’s boating party.
I was in Monet’s Garden.
No--I was Monet.

Colors were muted:
the delicate blue of the sky,
the stalwart blue of the sea.
Glints of sunlight bounced off surfaces.
I could not distinguish baseball hats or hairdos,
makeup choices or styles of clothing around me.
I couldn’t even see the expressions on faces.
I had to guess.

Sounds seemed to be magnified—
the boat’s rumbling engine, an over-tired baby’s cry,
the placid murmuring of an elderly couple--
as if my ears were trying hard to make up for what my vision lacked…

Trying to evoke the essence of things…

which is just the way it should be.

Susan Mahan
July 2001

Nana was an imposing buxom woman with a sharp tongue and a quick laugh.
She had sayings for everything, though I didn’t always understand them.
She was bossy, and most people were afraid of her.
She was famous for lowering her false teeth to scare us kids.
She and Mum crooned old songs in harmony, and they sang only to each other,
as if no one else was in the room.
Sometimes, Nana laughed so hard she had tears in her eyes,
and she had to blow her nose with a tissue she pulled from her budge.
She loved desserts.
She bought us chocolate lollipops,
and served us ginger ale and ice cream floats in fancy glasses.
Nana let us try on her jewelry,
and she liked me to comb her hair.

Nana died when I was twenty,
but we never got the chance
to talk about things that matter.

You always wanted to see the Grand Canyon.
Do you remember?

I told you to go,
but said that I didn’t really want to go with you.

All that heat?
All that climbing?
All that fuss about a big hole in the ground?

You didn’t go.

The world wide web calls the Grand Canyon
one of the most spectacular
examples of erosion anywhere in the world.

If you came back now,
you wouldn’t need to go to Arizona.

A whiff of sauerkraut at a food court
brought back memories
of Saturday night suppers in South Boston
before I was ten years old:

hot dogs, baked beans
and brown bread for Mum and us kids,
a side of sauerkraut for Dad.

I couldn’t fathom Dad’s choice of vegetable,
but, then, he was mostly a mystery to me.
He spent a lot of time reading
and had a far-off look in his eyes
when he glanced up from his books--
two traits I eventually acquired.
I now know that he traveled the world from his armchair.

But back then,
I had no taste for sauerkraut and a great imagination.
I suspected that Dad,
who had learned German in college
and who once diligently transcribed a book he was reading,
was an international spy
because he ate it with such gusto.