Rust Rings
or, the thing that's stuck in my eye
She asked me if I worked with metal. I laughed—the hesitant kind of laugh, the kind where you pronounce each ‘ha’ independently, like you’re giving yourself time to change your mind, wait, is this a joke, is this funny—and said no.
“No—I don’t work with any metal.”
And then—since she was the eye doctor and had just been staring into the deepest browns of my irises—I said, “Why? Is there metal in my eyes?”
I chewed on the words like they were mushed up green peas: unpleasant and lingering and without flavor.
“Yes!” she replied, cheerful, liked I’d solved a riddle far faster than she’d expected.
“Oh,” I said. “Is that bad?”
“Well, there’s a rust ring around your eye.”
That wasn’t really an answer, so I said, “Oh. Is that bad?”
“I can remove it,” she said.
“The rust ring?” I said.
“The metal,” she said. “That’s why I asked if you worked with—”
“Right,” I said. “So, is that bad? Like, for my sight?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “But I can remove it.”
“But do we have to if it’s not affecting my sight? Like, it won’t mess up my vision in six months or something?”
“Not at all.”
“Then why remove it?”
“Well, I wouldn’t do it now,” she said, smiling, shaking her head like I was the dumbest person she’d ever met who had metal in his eye. “It’ll take a different medication to heal.”
“The metal in my eye?”
“After I remove it.”
“But not today?”
“No—because you’ll be seeing sideways, what with the different eye drops.”
“For my stye?” That was why I’d come in the first place: My other, non-magnetic eye had a lid that was swollen and red and dragging down the rest of my face. My mood, too, increasingly so.
“Right. I’ll have to make a little incision in the eye to remove the metal.”
That sounded painful. Maybe even unnecessary. “But not today.”
“No. Maybe in two months.”
“But it’s not necessary? I’ll still be able to see alright?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Even with metal in my eye?”
She nodded, turned back to her computer, bored with me. It took every ounce of willpower to resist asking her if I needed to worry about setting off metal detectors, that I was leaving on a trip soon and would have to pass through TSA.
I didn’t think she’d appreciate the humor. And I still wasn’t sure if this was a time for jokes. Ha. Ha… Ha…….
“Looks like we’ll see you in two months,” the lady at the front desk said to me, her own, metal-free eyes scanning over the paper I’d given her. Her arms were full of little Disney-themed tattoos: Mrs. Potts. Jasmine. Tinker Bell.
Maybe the metal in my eye was improving my vision.
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll give you a call to schedule. See how I’m doing, you know.”
The lady nodded.
“Cool Disney stuff,” I said.
“Thanks, dear,” she said, smiled. I nodded, smiled back.
I got in my car, metal and all, and drove home. I wonder how long I’ll keep that metal in my eye. I wonder how big it is. Are we talking splinter or metal beam? A rust ring sounds kind of cool, to be honest, like the turbulent space dust your ship passes through on its way to an unknown planet.
I wonder about the whole business of removing the beam from your own eye before you go about removing the splinter from your neighbor’s. I wonder if I’m missing a spiritual analogy, if I’m being lazy about forgiveness, compassion, kindness toward another. Something like that. It’s easy, I guess, to just keep that metal in the eye if it doesn’t affect your day. If you can keeping going. If you didn’t know it was there in the first place.
I can still see. Nothing to worry about. I think we’ll stay the course.
It’s amazing how quickly we change our minds about things, how we acclimate to a threat, how we dismiss an intrusion into our very selves. Metal in the eye—cool. Sure.
I can still see, I think. Rust rings and all: the rocky debris we all must pass through to enter the unknown.