Strabismus

Prompt: Write about a time you tried something new. (500 words)

    Leaves were something new.  Her six year old mind marveled at their meticulous veins and arteries.  The overlapping details stunned her senses.  Until this morning she had lived in a watercolor world, trees were topped with green in the summer, orange and yellow in the fall and suddenly were bare branches in the winter.  This spring she’d seen nothing at all. Dr. Tom had explained the procedure with cartoons, diagrams and even an episode of Sesame Street.
    But nothing had prepared her for the reality of waking up; screaming and clawing at a sharp needle pinning the back of her hand.  Worst of all was the total darkness, she flailed to fight that too but her eyes felt taped shut.  She finally drew a breath, and then another that wasn’t a scream.  She kept breathing counting each minute of this eery eclipse. 
    It had been that way for two weeks.  Her cassette player automatically flipped at the end of a side so with eyes bandaged like a war veteran she listened continuously to the first installment of Prince Caspian, picturing it in her mind to stay sane. After another two weeks the bandages were removed but she wore dark glasses and kept her eyes shut most of the time.  As her mom weaned her off these children began to cry when they saw her at her in the park, backing away as if she had scalded them.  She asked about this and her mom reminded her of Dr. Tom’s warnings.  Her eyes would be bright red- blood shot for a few weeks after the operation.

    Then this morning she had opened her eyes and seen.  There outside her window, drawn in sharp focus hung emerald green leaves.  There were more than she could have ever imagined.  It took hundreds to comprise the whole of even one tree’s foliage.  She took time studying the individuals feeling silly and sorry that for so long she had only known them as a crowd. She looked beyond them briefly and was stunned by the sight of the sky.  The clouds.  The clouds were not flat white things painted on the vault of blue.  The sky was so much nearer than she had ever imagined.  She wondered at the varied depths and distances of the air and atmosphere. 
    She lay her head back on the pillow and resolved to ask for only a skylight this summer.  She knew her dad could do it. He was constantly pulling off other people’s roofs and re-roofing them. Besides she knew the ceiling above her was still damaged from the chimney fire over the winter.  She sighed, imagining the perfection of watching the stars pass overhead as she fell asleep.  Perfection.  Perhaps they also held secrets she had never before known.