Punxsutawney Phil and I both saw our shadows on Groundhog’s Day. I wonder if Phil was startled by his dark likeness that stretched across the frozen ground and mimicked him. I was.
I’d just been going about my day which included a benign trip to the optometrist to update my lens prescription. Frames are such a fashion accessory now and I was delighted to try on brighter colors and bigger bug-eyed shapes, imagining myself stylish and youthful, although in truth, I couldn’t see myself in the mirror without my own glasses.
The exam, while typically disorienting with the various charts of minuscule letters blurring in and out of focus, was no big deal. The optometrist said my eyes hadn’t changed much which was a relief, and then she offered a new service. For a slight charge, they could take a photo map of my eye. Sounded interesting. “Sure,” I said without a thought for why or what they might want to map.
Well, the photos came back obscured somehow, so the optometrist asked the technician to retake them. She said, “Please clean the machine this time. There’s something on the lens.” Then, after she looked at the new photos, she scratched her head. “Oh. Hmmm. That’s interesting,” she said.
Turned out the machine wasn’t unclean, the distortions were in my eyes. She beckoned me to have a look and even my untrained eye could see the aberrations on that map: a dark crater in one eye and a splattering of crystal flecks that resembled the Milky Way in the other. She called the flecks “asteroids” which I fancied since I tend to look toward the stars; and the other one, the dark crater, she called “a mole” which sent shivers up my spine.
The cancer that had killed my father when he was merely 30 years of age originated as a mole, but what was more troubling to me was the date. On February 2nd, 2009 the lumps in my breast were biopsied and declared malignant. Since then, after a year of surgery, chemo and radiation, plus other alternative health care measures, all of which I chronicled in a blog called Lump Lessons, I’ve regarded myself as super healthy. I don’t even use the word remission. I believe instead that I’m cancer free. I don’t live in fear; however, I do hold my breath at mammogram time. But, the point is, the utterance of the word mole on February 2nd, Groundhog’s Day, revealed that I am indeed harboring a ghost.
In a nanosecond I went from feeling sassy in the round, crimson red frames to imagining my eyeball being amputated due to metastasis and thus needing a pirate eyepatch. The fear motivated me to immediately schedule an exam with a specialist and within the week, I was assured that nothing was wrong. “No eye diseases, just curiosities,” said Dr. Louis Maisel of Rockland Retina.
I exhaled, and my ghost – my shadow – retreated to wherever it resides in the dark recesses of my psyche. But not before spooking me into a state of gratitude for all that is including winter.
Linda Ellen Kelly 