Freedom in Sight

Driving northeast from Noe Valley early tonight, the sun broke through behind me and lit up the world so that every detail seemed crisp and palpable. The hills ahead revealed each of their houses in a colorful rainbow of boxy beauty.

A girl walking by was looking at her phone. Every strand of her light brown hair shone with a radiance that was breath-taking.

The faces of the drivers of oncoming cars were illuminated. I could see the color of their eyes. One merry chap with blue eyes had a white beard and a ruddy face. He looked like a miniature St. Nick.

The trees with their blossoms stood out like Impressionist paintings suddenly brought into focus.

The eastern sky was purple, as a small rainstorm that had moistened us earlier continued on its inland journey.

Rains wash the pollution out of our coastal air; thus the exceptional clarity.

As I drove I thought about this type of seeing, this wonderful moment of seeing more than we usually see. On my mind was a conversation I'd had earlier with a blind woman, a writer who has spent her entire life sightless.

I'm profiling her for an ebook site I blog for, and I found her perspective on life and writing so invigorating. Most of us are sighted. We take this for granted. We can see; we've always been able to see.

Some of us need glasses, and many of us, as we age, have difficulty seeing as well as we once did.

But, in other ways, as we age, we notice details that passed us by when we were younger. To me, it is now the simplest moments that carry the most meaning. Not the complicated ones.

I'll try to supply an example.

Yesterday, as we emerged from the darkness of the garage, my grandson and I stepped out into the light of the yard. Suddenly we both noticed a single Monarch butterfly, fluttering over a plant nearby.

"I have a butterfly net somewhere," he said. "I could catch that butterfly, but I don't know where my net is."

"Maybe it's just as well, sweetie," I answered. "This way she can go free."

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