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By Yi Woo-won
On a balmy spring morning in May 1989, everything looked normal for another promising day. I was scheduled to go to Seoul the next day to attend the annual commencement of the University of Maryland for which I had been teaching Korean Studies since the 1970s. Everything was set except for my regular eye check at Yeungnam University Hospital, where I had been hospitalized for a month for the retina surgery of my right eye two years prior. I was really lucky because laser beam treatment had just arrived from the U.S. the previous year.
The hallway of the ophthalmic department was just packed with patients from across the country. Since I didn't have an appointment that day, I resolved to wait for a few hours by reading my book to consume the time. I thought I had been reading for about an hour or so, when suddenly I saw something black moving in my good left eye. I blinked my eyes but it was still there blocking the lower field of my vision. I was terrified by the sudden intuition of something bad happening because it was similar to what I had experienced in my right eye two years prior.
In the dark examination room, I was anxious and impatient for the doctor's verdict. I hoped he would tell me anything but hospitalization. But I was shocked when he said the retina had been detached. Sighing helplessly, he said that I came to him just one day too late. He meant that I needed to be hospitalized immediately. I was frustrated and even enraged to think that I was going to miss the commencement ceremony again, twice in a row. The next thing I knew, I was lying on a bed in my hospital pajamas and my eyes tightly bandaged. I was destined to be imprisoned in the disgusting hospital again for a whole month.
With my both eyes blindfolded, there was nothing much I could do all day except sleep and eat.
Since I slept so often, I was frequently disoriented between day and night and had to ask someone what day and what time it was. Trying to relieve the boredom of the long waking hours, I often ventured into the hallway, using my hands and body to get out of my bedroom. I walked feeling my way along the hallway until I caught a whiff of disinfectant at the clinical office for my daily checkup or to return.
But, I made a few serious mistakes in my initial ventures. Once, coming back to my room after having just exercised, I walked into the wrong room and almost climbed onto another patient's bed. I was frightened to death when I heard a stranger's voice. I could have been accused of housebreaking or some offense of indecent behavior if it was not in a hospital. I wondered how the blind could acclimatize themselves so wonderfully to their daily lives.
I remembered one evening in winter many years ago. I was coming home from work and dropped in at a "pojangjip," a soju bar in a tent often found along a sidewalk. Two young blind men were sitting at a table right across from me. They were enjoying soju, talking and giggling cheerfully. They were engrossed in some serious conversation. They were pouring soju into each other's small glass without spilling a drop. Then they picked up food so skillfully from the dishes as if they had a sensor on the tip of their respective chopsticks. When I watched them closely, they held the glass close to their ear, listening to the subtle differences in the sound the soju made as it was filled to the brim. I simply marveled at their amazing trick. They hardly seemed discontent or inconvenienced by the loss of their sight. Rather, they seemed to be fully enjoying their dark visionless world shrouded in secrecy.
One afternoon about two weeks after surgery, it rained all day. When the rain was beating down hard on the windows, I could tell it was a storm. I was aware dimly of the flashes of lightning through the bandages ― a sure sign that my impaired eye was improving. Although I was a day too late to avoid hospitalization, I was never too late to regain my eyesight after all.
Yi Woo-won (yiwoowon1988@gmail.com) lives in Waegwan, North Gyeongsang Province, and has been writing since 1986.
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