PaD: Blurry

Are you kidding me?  With these eyes, everything is blurry.  My glasses are the thickness of the bottom of a Coke bottle and my contracts are 8.5 power.  I started wearing glasses when I was in the fourth grade.  My father thought glasses were a source of revenue for doctors and nothing else.  He found out differently when he could no longer read and needed some himself.

I remember the first time I saw rain.  I had just got my first pair of soft contact lens.  I honestly had never seen the individual drops before or at least that I could remember.  Contact lens also solved the pesky problem of depth perception.  The first time I went to buy shampoo after getting my new lens I thought I was getting a bargain of a bigger bottle.  Jerry told me the bottle was the same size as always.  I also had trouble distinguishing between a soup spoon and a dessert spoon.  That was when Jerry knew why I was never good at tennis.

While in Jonesborough, I have been looking at the night sky.  I have missed being able to see the stars.  The city lights of a metropolitan area like Nashville produces so much light even at night that your eyes can no longer see the dimmer stars.  They are still there you just can't see them.  There are actually very few places on the earth still dark enough that you can truly see all the stars.  (Google it.)  Here in Jonesborough I can see many more stars but they are blurry to me.  I would love to see what the moon really look like.  I need to try out Carson's telescope one of these nights.

One day I will have perfect vision.  Oh, what a day that will be!

Now, let's talk about those eyebrows. . .

Jim Odum

Gosh, wasn't my dad a handsome man?  This picture was taken of him during his Navy days.  I love it because of the smile.  He had a quirky sense of humor and smiled easily.  In this picture, he looks a little like Jimmy and somewhat even like Linda in the eye area.  There is a little of me, too.  None of us got those pretty, blue eyes though.  We got the chocolate brown ones from our mother.  Nice but not as nice as crystal blue.  I remember how crystal blue his eyes still were the week before he died of cancer in 2003.  His old body was thin and tired but those eyes were still full of life and vivid blue.  I made a conscious effort to remember his eyes.  I wanted to remember the life in him, his spirit, not how cancer had wasted his physical body.  Today, on Father's Day, I chose a full-of-life young picture of my dad to share.  This is how I think his spirit looks now.  So, Happy Father's Day, Daddy, you look goooood!