Guest post: How to stay forever young

I met today’s guest blogger Jeff Flodin when he and his Seeing Eye dog joined our downtown memoir writing class for a few sessions in 2009. Writing has been Jeff’s primary vocation ever since: He is working on a short story collection about vision loss, and a version of this guest post originally appeared on his Jalapeños in the Oatmeal blog.

Jeff Flodin with his Seeing Eye dog.

by Jeff Floddin

My wife and I were high school sweethearts—for half of sophomore year, that is. We attended colleges 427 miles apart. She returned home for high school reunions, I didn’t. We neither saw nor spoke for thirty-two years.

During our decades apart, she had her first bout with breast cancer; I lost the ability to see faces.

When we reconnected, we shared lots of stories and, in the telling, she sounded the same as I remembered. Then and now, when I hear her voice, I see the face of a sixteen year-old girl.

My last trip to the picture show when I could see the picture was The Untouchables. That was around 1989, when the blind spots in my visual field meant I had to look from one face to another to follow the conversation. I saw that Sean Connery was balding. I had noticed that I too was balding. I saw how virile a balding Sean Connery was. I thought the same applied to me. But my algebraic truth that if a=b and b=c, then a=c sadly didn’t apply when a = Sean Connery and c = me. At least, that’s what my friends told me, and, bless them, they broke the news in a Disney way.

At our wedding seven years ago, the friend who introduced us read from my wife’s sophomore yearbook “Hey,” I had written, “it was fun being your boyfriend for four and a half months (132 days). Maybe we should try it again sometime—like in 25 or 30 years.”

Everybody oohed and aahed.

I smiled serenely, like a prophet. I scanned every face, every dear face that had not changed in forty years. And I saw and heard kindness and caring, joy and love. And I became aware of what beauty truly means and where it dwells.

And then I kissed my beautiful bride.

Jeff Flodin and his Seeing Eye dog Randy will make a cameo appearance in my upcoming book. You can get a sneak peek of a short chapter from Writing Out Loud online now, free of charge. Just complete the form here.