Jill's Journal: ‘I can see clearly now the blur is gone ...’

I’m guessing after you read the headline, ‘I can see clearly now the blur is gone’, you may be wondering if my “elevator goes to the top floor”. I can assure you, that to the best of my knowledge, it does. The play in words is intentional, and are the very words I’ve been singing in my head in recent days.

You see, after months of not having the ability to see the world clearly, ‘the blur is literally gone.’ For me personally, it’s like a Christmas miracle.

I’ll be honest, I knew as each month went by this year that my view wasn’t as sharp as it should be or could be, which meant an eye exam was step one. But when the doctor couldn’t get me dialed in on a new prescription, the next step was a referral to an ophthalmologist.

When I walked into that office, I was sure that cataract removal would be the diagnosis the doctor would be recommending for these six-decade-old green eyes of mine.

Lo and behold, that turned out not to be the first plan of attack. Instead, he suggested I have my cornea’s smoothed. Apparently, I had bumpy corneas, which was the first issue with my blurry sight. The bumps, he told me are a result of one or two things: an eye injury or genetics.

For me, it came down to the latter. Good ‘ol family genetics.

While I do have cataracts brewing, for now, I decided to take the doctor’s suggestion that an updated prescription for these well-used eyes would serve me well for now.

Last week, my updated prescription glasses and sunglasses arrived, with the latter being the first delivered. I was a like a kid on Christmas morning – I simply couldn’t wait to slip them on – and to see. As I noted earlier, it had been months since I could see clearly, and so I watched TV that evening wearing my sunglasses. I was able to read the TV guide without squinting and the fine print scrolling along the bottom of the screen.

“I can see clearly now the blur is gone,” played again and again in my mind.

At Thursday’s girls’ basketball game, I leaned over to my sidekick photography friend, Wilma, and whispered, “Can I tell you how cool it is to see from one end of the court to the other?”

She smiled. She knew the path I’ve been on to get to that moment.

In church on Sunday, for the first time in a long time, I didn’t have to page through the hymnal in order to sing along with others. Nope, on this Sunday, for the first time in a long time, I could see the words clear as a bell on the video board, and I was elated to once again sing loud and proud.

As for typos in my work, I can’t promise they won’t show up on occasion, but I can say that I’m catching more and more of them these days, because “I can see clearly now the blur is gone.”

And that’s surely something to sing about.

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Merry Christmas, and may you enjoy all the songs of the season – whether they’re in tune or off-key.