Coonridge Digest: Worried about the opticians’ plot? Think of Mildred

Greetin’s from the Ridge.

It’s among the least stressful of medical procedures but I still dread it. This week Herb and me made our annual jaunt into the eye doctor to see how much his vision charts had shrunk in the past twelve months.

I’ve long known it’s a plot among opticians but I suffer it. When you’re about thirty-two they show you a chart designed by the world’s worst speller and ask you to read down the list of letters. As you grow older the nurse secretly sneaks in and reduces the size of the chart to where anything past the third line becomes ancient Hebrew.

For years Herb has somehow managed to sneak in and memorize the fourth and fifth lines then claimed to have barn-burnin’ vision while I pick up my prescription for glasses strong enough to watch him smirk all the way home.

And every year as I sit there squintin’ and strainin’ I think of Mildred. When I was just a girl Mildred was ancient and a regular relic in Coonridge. She had what’s termed “Hyperopia.” Farsightedness. Like all optimists, you assumed her to be a kook until you grew old and smart enough to realize that she was a saint.

I can remember sittin’ on the ground beside her lawn chair, watchin’ the Coonridge Carps Little League team practicin’ one summer’s afternoon. The Carps were coached by Stumpy Riley, a totally disagreeable little fella who once claimed to have played with a minor league team somewhere in lower Arkansas. Stumpy never had any proof of this but with his personality we all agreed that if he ever played pro ball it was in lower somewhere.

Stumpy was one of these coaches more concerned with his own reputation than the kids’ baseball skills and his method of leadership amounted to shouts, sarcasm, and belittling. It’s funny how we’ve eliminated these barbarisms in all phases of our society but the military and education.

While most of us sat there and cringed at the humiliation takin’ place, Mildred would sit back in her plastic rocker and mutter, “My, what lovely children.” As an overweight little right fielder would run, stumble, and splatter in an attempt please his ego-driven mentor, she’d smile and say, “I’ll bet Freddy becomes quite a man some day.” Mildred’s ability to look beyond the immediate problem and deep into the promisin’ future was a trait I’d always wanted to call my own. She was a substitute cook down at Coonridge Elementary and one of the most vivid memories of my childhood was in the voluminous folds of her green print dress.

We were cowerin’ in the basement cafeteria one April afternoon as the town’s sirens screeched away over our huddled heads. A tornado had been sighted west of town and everybody with half a brain was takin’ cover in the nearest hideaway. For me, it was snuggled up to Mildred’s left hip against a mountain of government subsidy green beans. As the third and fourth-graders formed a chorus of whimpers and cries around Mildred, she sighed and said, “Aren’t wind and rain wonderful things? They clear the world of all the trash and wash it clean, just for us!” The whimperin’ subsided for a moment until Merle Waters got a cramp in his leg, knocked over the stack of green beans, and we all assumed that the tornado had blown the roof off the cafeteria.

Her farsightedness brought Mildred several other unusual medical conditions…like the ability to sleep at night, a lightness of heart, and the ability to warm a room with her presence.

Mildred lived her life sufferin’ from this far-sightedness, never for once takin’ note of the immediate, but lookin’ always to the possible…the potential…the beauty that lay just beyond the next horizon.

For years I assumed that it was some mental distraction that kept her from realizin’ the reality all around us. As I grew older I found it was a rare and precious gift…to look beyond the rocks we climb to the glorious mountaintop where we’re headed.

If you look up “Hyperopia,” it’ll say it, …is usually inherited.

Children are often hyperopic which may lessen as an adult… Boy, ain’t that the truth. A child raised to see the sordid and ugly will grow into a short-sighted adult and it is truly a trait that we seem to be born with but lose when surrounded by nay-sayers and pessimists.

I flunked the eye-test again, and again my prescription was increased just enough to cause me to misjudge the front step this mornin’. As I stood there spraddle-legged and clingin’ to the rail I thought “Mildred would have known better. She’d of skipped the step and looked at the sky instead.”

You ever in Coonridge, stop by. We may not answer the door, but you’ll enjoy the trip.