Small’s Eyes

Recently Molly digitized a lengthy VHS tape that features a series of three Kennelly School of Irish Dance performances at a St. Paddy’s day festival in Calaveras, CA, in 2000. I’m not sure who was behind the lens. It could have been Lila’s husband, Brad, or Shirley’s husband, Scott. I edited it down to a six-minute and two-second excerpt of the first of the day’s shows. Not long after her stellar performances, poor little Molly (age 10) developed a high fever and fell asleep on the concrete floor backstage. But until then, the show had gone on.

You’ll see a: light jig, three-hand reel, mother/daughter two-hand reels, Molly’s single jig, a hard reel and a hornpipe.

On to a different topic: Can you imagine waking up one morning to find that, all of a sudden, you can’t see much besides big shapes and colors? You can’t read so you can’t check your email. You can’t entertain yourself with a book, nor can you watch a video because, being a little deaf, you can’t understand what’s going on unless you read the captions, which you can’t. Plus, your eye hurts. You’re all alone. You can’t even look up the phone number of your eye doctor because you can’t see. It sounds like a nightmare, but it’s my mother’s reality. Luckily she has an almost photographic memory for phone numbers, so she was able call her ophthamologist. 

Small has macular degeneration in both eyes and gets shots in one every 10 weeks. My sister drives up from West Virginia to take her to the doc, as she did last week. All went will with the injection. It wasn’t until five days later—three days ago—that Ma’s trials began. Either the eye shot was contaminated or she’s having an allergic reaction to it. 

Luckily, her late-partner’s children live nearby, and they have come to the rescue by checking on her and taking her to the doctor, who gave her a bunch more nasty shots in the eye to try to combat the problem.

Small is brave and stoic. The doctor won’t absolutely guarantee that her sight will be restored, which must terrify her. But she doesn’t ever complain. In the meantime, when she’s not doing domestic stuff like laundry, she has to spend much of her time lying on the bed with her eyes closed, which would drive an active person like her crazy. Wish her luck.

Here she is circa 2006, responding to my announcement that it was cocktail hour.