Gifts

Last year when my parents asked what I wanted for Christmas, I told my mother that her left eye would be fine. I didn’t care that it wouldn’t match my fiery hazel, just so long as it worked passably. I might have preferred my father’s blue, but his don’t work so well. Both of my mother’s eyes work well enough; I did just fine for almost a decade with only one functioning eye, so surely this seventy-something old broad with a relatively sedentary lifestyle could do with only one. I figured she could take to wearing a patch and train a parrot to sit on her shoulder; those things might match the rapier that she’s usually carrying around tp stab people who try cutting in front of her in line at Wal-Mart. She used to carry a horseshoe in her purse for those occasions, but I guess that got too heavy for her.
I could see well enough to get the look that fell on her face. Maybe she thought I already had a surgeon lined up or something. and that I had forged surgical consent forms like had forged absence excuses and warning slips through high school. That look gave me a brief flash of, well, something. It couldn’t be shame; I am pretty shameless about my sense of humor, and my mother knows that. She’s the one who always preferred Three Stooges over Sesame Street anytime there was conflict between me and an older sibling.. I think her look jarred me with interpersonal disconnection that she didn’t get my dry delivery. She’s my mother. She should know that if I were going to resort to black market solutions to the eye problems, I would certainly take a fresh eye not from an elderly woman, but from an infant. Babies can learn to adjust better to a life with only one eye far easier than an old person can.
I reverted to a more serious answer. There was a bit of scrap lumber and old doors across a few of the properties. I wanted a Seats Craftsman 19.2 volt battery circular saw to easily cut it down to pieces that would fit into the city trash bins. I didn’t get that either; something bout the dangers inherent in blind guys using power tools.
I got a set of deluxe Tupperware with airtight gaskets on the lids and snap locks on each side. That could come in useful for keeping an infant’s eye airtight for an hour or two until I can get it to that black market surgeon.
And my parents also still gave their annual gift: they renewed my AAA membership.