Seeing Space

I was in my late 20s when I first realized that clouds had volume.  That they took up space.  That there was space between them.  Sure, I “knew” that clouds had volume.  I had learned about it from Mark Brean and Steve Moleski, the local weather guys who worked at the Fairbanks Museum Meteorology department and were the radio voice for the forecast everyday.  They would come to our schools too and teach us all kinds of things that generated wonder.  But I never really became aware of the details as a kid.  I’m not exactly sure when I would have “lost” the awareness of the space around things or did I never develop it?
    When I was six years old, in the first grade, Mrs. Laird’s class, my sisters and I had a rope swing in the back yard, hanging from a huge old maple tree with the perfect limb positioned to tie a thick blue rope around.  One day my younger sister and I were racing out the back door to get to the swing.  She beat me to the door and let the old screen door snap back behind her.  It was an old kind of door that was heavy and metal, and it still had the storm glass window in it because it was early spring in northern Vermont.  The sun came out that day so we were very excited to get outside!  As that door snapped back my skinny little arm, my left arm, reached to keep the door from closing.  My hand hit the glass window right in the center and it shattered. The sharp edges of the broken glass cutting into my wrist in several places.  I don’t remember crying, although I’m sure I did.  All I remember is I got to ride in the front seat of my mother’s Chrysler station wagon all the way hospital with a blue towel wrapped around my arm to help stop the bleeding.
    Was it then that I stopped being able to observe the details of my surroundings? Was this event enough to disrupt the balance of my nervous system? Did that event impact my vision?
    A couple of months after the glass incident, it was summer.  I had turned 7 years old.  This was the summer I was going to learn to read and swim! My family was staying at a “camp”; that’s what we Vermonters call houses on the lake.  This camp was a huge old white house, up the hill from the edge of Lake Willoughby.  Lake Willoughby is a glacier formed lake with steep banks and mountains on either side.  The water’s edge was down a path through the woods and was not visible from the house.  So we kids couldn’t play in the water without the adults coming along.  My dad did the logical thing. He hung a big blue rope, with different sized loops to help position your hands and feet safely, to yet another perfectly positioned limb of a huge old maple tree to keep the kids busy.  This tree was at the top of the hill and the swing swung out over the yard that slopped down toward the lake.  The swing was really intended for my older sister who is 7 years older than me.  But how do you really keep kids from these things?
    We have pictures of me in my little pink dress, I always wore dresses, swinging happily out over that yard.  I remember the roots of the tree and how you had to have your feet perfectly positioned and the rope ready to catch your foot as you swung out.  One day, after many successful trips out over the yard, taking turns with my younger sister, cousins and friends, I missed the big bottom loop with my foot.  My hands slipped and I flew down the hill landing with my arms out stretched to break my fall.  I broke both of my arms.  Again, I don’t remember crying, but I’m sure I did.  I only remember riding in the front seat to the hospital which was about 40 minutes away.  Actually, I didn’t go to the hospital right away.  I rested with ice on my arms in the built in day bed, made of a richly colored wood, in the huge living room.  This room had huge windows facing the lake and floor to ceiling shelves everywhere made of the same richly colored wood as the day bed that was my nest for a bit.  I rested for a day or so before everyone was certain I needed to see a doctor.  Was it then that my vision shifted? Did I have whiplash? A concussion?  I was little and resilient so I don’t think it was ever discussed or entertained as anything that should be addressed.    
    Before school started the cast came off of my right wrist. My left wrist had broken in two places so that cast stayed on an extra week or so.  I still remember the doctor’s face as he cut the cast off my left wrist, with the saw he had just shown me would’t cut my skin, revealing the scars from the window incident a few months before.  I guess he didn’t have it documented that those scars had been there.  I remember my mother comforting him that those scars had been there before the casts and everyone chuckling about my being so accident prone.
    I was in the second grade.  Early in the school year it was noticed that I wasn’t reading well.  I was very inconsistent.  I would make up words, lose my place a lot and basically avoided reading.  I would schmooze on the playground to get enough information about the books we were reading as a class to pass the quizzes.  I was the only one in the class to be pulled out for reading help.  I would sit at a little white desk in the hallway, with a big window to look out of right in front of me. Mrs. Kusitch was very nice and gave me the coolest stickers, but I don’t think it helped me much, I still pretty much refused to read more than absolutely necessary.
    Someone suggested I have an eye exam, which made sense.  Both of my parents had glasses so it was highly likely in my future.  I was given glasses; +0.50 spheres OU.  If you’re in the eye doctor biz you know why I give that detail.  My mother remembers me being in awe that I could see the leaves on the trees with these new glasses.  Long story short, I continued to struggle with reading but managed to figure out a way to do well enough in school that everyone left me alone.  I joke that my Grammy Norma gave me her stubbornness and confidence to not let my difficulties doing school work bother me too much.  By the time I was in 8th grade I was wearing a highly myopic prescription, close to a -6.00 sphere in each eye.  So what do you think? Did the events surrounding my 7th birthday change the trajectory of my vision development or was it all just genetics?
    Back to that day in my late 20s.  I was already a residency trained vision therapy and rehabilitation Optometrist.  I had been through vision therapy, but in a sort of disjointed way because of the schedule I kept while a student and resident.  A lot of my vision therapy took place as I learned to teach procedures to patients.  I had been purposefully doing some therapy activities along side many of my patients for years.  I knew it look me longer than many of my young patients to see things popping out on the binocular activities but I knew I was learning along the way.    
    When I noticed the clouds, I was driving.  Headed south on Hwy 35 with the Belmar Bay to my right and rows of tightly packed houses to my left.  Stopped at a traffic light, I looked up toward the clouds to find some space.  Living on the Jersey Shore was an adjustment for me.  I was used to the mountains and open fields of Vermont and now I was living in a popular vacation destination full of people, cars and “beach houses”, many of which were no where near the beach by my definition.  All of a sudden the clouds looked HUGE and puffy.  They were moving and changing shape.  I could almost feel their softness.  I was amazed.  I honestly had never been aware of so much dimension within the clouds.  The next day I was as a park with my children and I glanced at the treelike.  And it wasn’t just a treeline.  I could see the space between the different trees and bushes.  I was in awe again.
    Sure, I could see, but was I really SEEING?  And I could look, but had I really been LOOKING?