From what I can tell, the real reason to find someone and fall in love and move in together and share calendars and a bed is so that when you’re old you’ll have someone who can help get you to your next doctor’s appointment.
Whenever I have some sort of medical appointment of my own, I always see older couples helping each other along. And it looks like it really takes two to get there. Leaving the house when you’re old takes as much courage as jumping out of a plane when you’re younger. It’s daunting, high risk, and there’s a good chance you won’t make it back.
I see them side by side, holding each other up like cartoon drunks, forging ahead, conquering all the treacherous obstacles in their way: parking lots, curbs, heavy doors, building directories, vaguely marked elevator keys, stairs, a loose paper cup blown across their path. It’s a minefield out there.
Even driving is a two-person job at that point. Like soldiers driving a tank together, each has a role to play. One sits up high on a pile of books in big dark glasses, taking care of the lookout and the steering. The other, through a series of verbal commands, handles the stuff down below, working the radio and the directional and pushing on the pedals with her hands.
This is something I’ve tried to keep in mind when I lose my patience on the road. There are a lot of cars making insane moves out there, and for years I figured they were being driven by people much like myself, only dumber, drunker, and more inconsiderate. While this could be true, a larger number are just terrible drivers because they are either very young or very old. The inexperienced drivers are encountering fresh challenges every time they head down the road. Every pothole, parked car, and squirrel represents a new, terrifying event. And the old people have seen it all, dealt with it all, and can’t remember a thing about it.
It must be terrifying driving under the influence of extreme age. Contrary to what my kids think, I’m not old by any means, and already my skills are waning. I have the eyesight of a nearsighted mole rat. I’m not as bad as that old cartoon character Mr. Magoo, but he’s suddenly not as funny to me. For my entire life, my eyes were amazing. I would read signs from miles away, especially in front of old people just to rub it in.
I think back on all those times my mother yelled at me to stop reading in the dark and I’d just laugh, knowing full well that I had the eyes of a bat. But maybe she was right. Maybe that’s why my eyes aren’t so great today—a mix of reading in the dark and bad karma.
When my eyes started naturally aging and I slowly realized that I needed reading glasses, I started noticing that one eye was worse than the other. After a year or so of self-diagnosing at the CVS while picking up ChapStick and sunblock, I decided that maybe I should go to a real eye doctor.
It was time for a real doctor’s appointment all by myself.
My good friend referred me to her doctor on New York’s Upper East Side. This sat very well with me. The Upper East Side is filled with a lot of old, rich people who go only to the best doctors. I don’t often equate quality with money, but in the instance of health care I do. You show me a doctor who can afford the rent on Fifth Avenue and I rest easy.
When I arrived I was met with big heavy doors with iron handles, marble floors, and a doorman. After living in New York for a long time in buildings that hardly had working doors, I found having a doorman very impressive.
I filled out my new-patient forms and listened to the hum of the fish filter while eavesdropping on the other patients. An oboe player from the Metropolitan Opera was complaining that her appointment time would make her late for Carmen rehearsal. Only in New York.
When they called my name I entered what looked like a library or a study that just happened to have some medical equipment in it. It was the kind of place where gentlemen of old would retire after dinner to talk about business and safari so as not to offend their wives’ dainty ears.
The friendly nurse set me up in front of the giant eye-testing devices and I responded as best I could to which way the “E” was facing and where the hot-air balloon was on the horizon. Although I wasn’t perfect, it felt like I was kind of nailing it.
I was led back to the doctor’s private office to wait for his arrival. When he came in he was wearing a trench coat, which you really see only in New York, D.C., and London. This is the coat of a grown-up.
He seemed really smart. Not cutting-edge smart, but traditional, “this is the way it’s always been done so we’re going to keep doing it this way because it’s the right way” kind of smart. He checked my hot-air balloon results and all seemed pretty average. And then he grew quiet. He asked me to look into his own equipment.
“Uh-huh … hmm…”
I started to worry.
“I’m going to dilate your eyes. Have you ever had that done before?”
“No, I have not.”
“Okay. It’s not a big deal. This will give me a chance to see other parts of the eye.”
He hit me with some eyedrops, and after a couple of minutes everything grew blurry. It’s not a great feeling.
Back on the machine.
“Wow. Look at that. Did you have an eye injury when you were younger?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“You definitely had something.… Hey, Carol,” he said, “come look at this. You don’t see this every day.”
For a doctor who gave the impression that he’s seen everything in his career, this was not good.
She stepped in. “Wow, will you look at that.”
“What is it?” I asked, now sweating on the equipment.
“You have a scar on the right cornea. It’s like a smudge right in the middle of your eye. I’m really surprised you’re able to see as well as you can.”
“Is that why it’s fuzzy when I look out of that eye?” A stupid question.
“That’s right. You must have scratched it pretty badly when you were a kid and now that you’re getting older it’s coming into play.”
“I do remember this one pillow fight that I had when I got really stung in the eye,” I blurted out like a moron.
“That might explain it,” he said. As if that behavior explained not only my eye smudge but why I didn’t get accepted into an Ivy League school and become a doctor. At the same age when he was playing chess and dreaming of medical school, my friend and I were beating each other in the head with pillows.
He put me at ease about my condition, which he explained wouldn’t get worse and while not perfect shouldn’t pose any future problems. While he spoke, my eyes reached maximum dilation, or in basic terms, I couldn’t see squat.
We shook hands and he said goodbye to me a little too loudly, as if my ears were the problem. Carol led me to the desk. I was bumping into things and making jokes, but this was no laughing matter. I really couldn’t see. I just picked a random credit card out of my wallet and handed it to the woman at the desk, which may have explained the doorman and the fancy fish tank.
Carol said I could wait in the office while my vision returned, but in that stubborn male way I assured her that I was more than capable of seeing my way out. I had to stop myself from telling her how good my eyes were in high school as I felt for the door.
I guided myself out of the building by memory. As he opened the door, the doorman gave me a New Yorker “See ya later, buddy, unless you see me first.”
I laughed, probably in the wrong direction, as the cool breeze told me where the outside of the building was. I headed out onto the street and there I stood. Alone. With no idea of where I was going or how I would get there. I needed my eyes. I needed help.
I needed my wife.
This is how life will be in the future. When my everyday vision, my best vision, will be like this dilated mess. And while my wife’s eyes may be better than mine, she’ll have her own problems, like a bum hip or weak hearing. But it will be all right. We’ll have each other to lean on as we spend the rest of the day making our way back home.
Maybe we’ll stop off at the market and pick up an apple or a tuna sandwich that we can split for dinner before watching a show together and turning in early so we can get up at sunrise and head to our next appointment.
Because that’s how it goes.