Doris’s Bio:

In addition to writing short stories and poetry, Doris recently has finished her first novel, Cabbagehead, the story of a peculiar friendship between Bradley, an introverted middle-aged man and his philosophical (though somewhat verbose) bedding plant, a friendship that sets Bradley on a journey of self-discovery while building relationships with his family. With her novel completed, Doris wonders: are there agents who specialize in quirky, humorous, philosophical, relationship-driven, ecology-conscious, literary-satirical character studies?

In June of this year, Doris participated in a poetry workshop at the Colgate Writers’ Conference, and in recent years attended the Colgate Conference’s novel-intensive workshop, a fiction workshop at The New York State Summer Writers’ Institute at Skidmore College, and the Algonkian novel workshop. Her story As If I Could was a runner-up in WOW’s Summer 2008 Flash Fiction contest. Doris has a bachelor’s degree in English and philosophy and was a teacher and a newspaper reporter/feature writer in a former life.

Doris has lived and traveled throughout the United States and the world: in the last three years she and her husband Don, an African historian, have traveled in China, France, Spain, The Gambia, and Mali (where she was received enthusiastically on Inauguration Day wearing her “Obama ‘08” T-shirt).

You Can See

By Doris E. Wright

 

When I was two years old, I was the victim of what one might, without exaggeration, call a serious accident, after which everything changed. Now I know we hear the claim “everything changed” frequently enough to be skeptical, but I would say that it's a pretty safe bet that it’s true about this accident.

My father, a physician, was a Mid-westerner who placed great value on hard work and integrity. He seemed always to be on the lookout for additional work—even menial tasks—although his medical practice kept him busy through long days and into the night. His office was in our home, and, to this day, whenever I catch a whiff of antiseptic, I get nostalgic.

My father would often take a break between patients, come in the “home” part of the house, and carry me around or change my diaper or feed me healthy, unprocessed food which he pureed himself. My mother found these unpredictable visits intrusive, because he would rush in, noisy and cheerful, disturb our quiet routine, and rush out again. He also fancied himself handy, and would take on any chores that needed doing. This was to my mother’s frustration, because my father spread these tasks over several brief forays into the house, leaving tools and messes at the site of the current home improvement, sometimes for days; and, because these jobs were, to say the least, not well done.

One day he decided to install a ceiling fan in our family room, the room where my mother put me in my play pen for my afternoon nap, while she took up the task of ironing, a chore that she felt justified her addiction to watching soap operas. Somehow she never ran out of things to iron. (On occasion she ironed sheets, socks and even towels, and kept a supply going by putting, each morning, even slightly used articles in the wash long before their time.) Though the house had central air conditioning, the afternoon sun poured into this room, and with the heat from the iron and the physical exertion, my mother became extremely uncomfortable. But my father would not allow her to adjust the thermostat since it controlled the temperature for the entire house, and lowering it would chill his patients waiting in paper gowns in the examining rooms. A ceiling fan seemed an appropriate solution.

I won’t labor over the details of the accident that took place soon after my father announced the installation complete, took the usual unwarranted pleasure in his handiwork, and turned on the fan. Leave it to say that the fan engaged in its centrifugal motion, got carried away (literally), left its mooring, spun about the room as much as its weight allowed, and delivered a glancing blow to my innocent, upturned and curious face. Forever after, I had to manage with only one eye.

Due to my parents' quick action, things that could have been worse...weren't. There was a hospitalization, a surgery, later follow by several other mostly cosmetic surgeries, and the placement of an attractive and nearly matching glass eye whose only fault was its propensity to remain static.

But things, as you can imagine, did change. While I can’t remember the actual event, I’ve heard the stories so many times and from so many perspectives, that the picture I have in my mind seems like an actual memory. Of course that depiction is rather clean and neat and devoid of gruesome details, and I can relate it in a pretty straightforward way that’s not upsetting to me or to my audience.

The accident pretty much ended my parents’ relationship, though the marriage plodded along for years in its odd fashion. It’s almost like my mother and father crashed into each other in that moment and, like the blade striking my face, veered off from one another, propelled by some physical imperative. They spun away from each other and, like parallel lines, they were destined never again to join.

My father gave up on being a handyman and called in other professionals for those assorted jobs. My mother abandoned ironing, and had the wash sent out, though she did continue to watch soap operas, but now she took up knitting to condone her idleness. And...my father never again looked directly into my face.

So you see, everything did change.

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