strabismus |strəˈbizməs|noun
abnormal alignment of the eyes; the condition of having a squint.
Flannista's first formal writing assignment was in 1977 for a college senior fiction class: "Write out your first memory," said my professor, Dr. Ann Ferguson. "Always start with what comes first".
Thirty-four years later -- squinting -- I'm starting again.
When I was six years old, I had an eye operation to correct congenital strabismus -- the only time I've ever been in the hospital overnight as a patient.
My mother did not tell me I was going to the hospital. I thought I was going to the Reform School. Sometimes when I misbehaved my mother ritually dressed me in a Sunday School dress, black patent leather shoes and lacy socks, packed a small red suitcase, put me into the back seat of the car and drove seven miles to the Reform School where she threatened to leave me unless I behaved. The hospital was around the corner from the Reform School. The day my parents drove me to the hospital, I was dressed in the same Sunday School clothes and balancing in my lap the same small red suitcase. When my father turned off the car engine in the parking lot, I wailed loudly and promised to be good.
I next remember my father lifting me up to a high bed and setting me down near pillows with unwrinkled pillow cases. My mother then undressed me, placing my Sunday School coat neatly across a chair next to the bed. A nurse came in and took my temperature, holding the tip of the thermometer to make certain that I would not bite down on the glass.
I remember being wheeled into a room with intimidating hot lights and seeing Dr. Brown -- my eye doctor -- in a green smock with what appeared to be a mask hanging loosely around his neck. I then heard, "This will smell nice," as what appeared to be another mask was placed over my entire face, shutting out the brightness and heat. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, feeling like my older sister was sitting on top of my head in the back seat of the car. The pressure was from a tremendous bandage covering the right side of my face. I cried and a nurse spoke softly and gently ran her fingers through my hair.
I remember hating the soft-boiled egg. I remember playing cards with a boy, probably my age, who was wearing white flannel pajamas, polka-dotted with red and blue baseballs and baseball bats. Plastic tubing was coming from his nose, and his head was bald and marked with what looked like a blue grid. When my father and oldest sister came to visit me, they brought -- I can't remember specifically -- either a small Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck guitar 
with four clear plastic strings. I could turn a tiny red handle on the side of the guitar and play, "Pop Goes the Weasel." I wanted to show it to my card-playing friend, but a nurse told me he was no longer in the hospital. Years later, my mother would tell me that the boy had died and that I, too, could have died. She would also tell me that the expense of my operation prevented my parents from purchasing the lawn furniture they had always wanted.
I do not know if, in fact, the boy died. I am certain that I was never close to death, though I was undoubtedly terrified.
These random, unclear images elicit questions: Why didn't my mother tell me I was going to the hospital? Where was my mother when I woke up in the middle of the night after surgery? Why didn't she come with my father and sister to visit me? Did she have her hands full with my three younger sisters? Were my parents unable to afford a babysitter?
Are answers even important? I don't know. What I do know is that as I have tried to look back at my life, I am still squinting, unable to clearly see. I want my memory to align, to align not only with these random, unclear images, but also with words. Words that will line up and plainly pinpoint the beginning of a story that unveils what I still do not understand about a mother who has never seen me and most likely, never will.
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