Seeing Things Read online

  Seeing Things is a delight for the senses. Patti Hill is gifted with the ability to provide a colorful illustration with words, in which I could see better through the eyes of an older woman with macular degeneration than I can see through my own eyes. The story is honest about family struggles, filled with realistic characters and gentle humor—a literary treat.

  —Hannah Alexander,

  author of A Killing Frost and the Hideaway series

  What a joyful adventure this was! In Seeing Things, Patti Hill has created the most wonderful traveling companion: Birdie Wainwright, a plucky, funny, deliciously foolish, wondrously wise grandmother with macular degeneration and hallucinations of Huckleberry Finn. Mix her in with a well-meaning dog, a lovesick pharmacist, and a family much too uppity for its britches, and you’ve got a tender, soul-stirring novel that will make you smile long after you turn the last page.

  —Kathleen Popa,

  author of To Dance in the Desert and

  The Feast of Saint Bertie

  Patti Hill has created a quirky bunch of characters and dropped them into a fascinating story world where nothing is too far-fetched in her delightful novel Seeing Things. Thoroughly engaging from start to finish.

  —Sharon K. Souza, author of Lying on Sunday

  At times ticklish and charming (oh, that Huck Finn!), at other times deeply moving, Patti Hill’s Seeing Things kept the pages turning despite the hour. This grandmother’s quest to put her family on the mat and lower them through the ceiling of pain and past mistakes, right to Jesus’s feet, is a tale I could read again and again.

  —Tamara Leigh

  author of Faking Grace and Leaving Carolina

  Seeing Things skillfully weaves together the hard reality of afflictions with the whimsical side of life. While captivated by entertaining episodes, profound insights seep into your soul—setbacks don’t have to defeat us, troubles don’t need to bring gloom, and physical afflictions can usher in adventures rather than limitations.

  —Janet Perez Eckles,

  International Christian speaker and author

  Wise, sassy Birdie is anything but your predictable, sweet little old lady. Although her eyesight fails her, Birdie has a heart as big as Montana with which she sees what most people around her cannot. Patti Hill’s warm, funny, smart, and deeply satisfying novel, Seeing Things, invites us to close our eyes and see what can’t be seen, mend what can’t be reconciled, and persevere with those we’ve been given to love.

  —Marilyn Hilton,

  author of The Christian Girl’s Guide to Your Mom

  Seeing Things is the touching story of a mother’s love for her family flawlessly told by a master storyteller. Patti Hill weaves touch of whimsy into the lives of her characters and leaves you longing for one more capricious afternoon spent in their presence.

  —Debbie Fuller Thomas,

  author of Tuesday Night at the Blue Moon

  Patti Hill has done it again! Fall into a world where all is not as it seems, or is it? Seeing Things is a feast for the eyes—and a delicious tale of love redeemed and the strength of God and family with the occasional visit from Huck Finn thrown in for good measure. From the first page to the last, this book will not disappoint.

  Kathleen Y’Barbo, author of Beloved Castaway and Beloved Captive

  Copyright © 2009 by Patti Hill

  All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America

  978-0-8054-4751-4

  Published by B&H Publishing Group

  Nashville, Tennessee

  Author is represented by Books & Such Literary Agency, Janet Kobobel Grant, 52 Mission Circle, Suite 122, PMB 170, Santa Rosa, CA 95409-5370, www.booksandsuch.biz.

  Dewey Decimal Classification: F

  Subject Heading: APPARITIONS—FICTION MACULAR DEGENERATION—FICTION FAITH—FICTION

  Scripture used is taken from the New International Version (NIV), copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Also used is KJV, King James Version.

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Although one character is based on historical account, all other characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Dedication

  Geoff and Matt—

  You’re still opening my eyes to wonders beyond my seeing.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Dennis, my beloved husband, best friend, cheerleader, and patron. Your love keeps me grounded and free to fly. You’re my hero, babe.

  Janet Kobobel Grant, agent and friend, thanks for saying what I need to hear. We’ll always have Sonoma!

  The creative folks at B&H Publishing Fiction Group made Seeing Things a beautiful reality. My heartfelt thanks to all, especially Karen Ball, who supported me with wit and wisdom.

  David Webb, my intrepid editor, fearless with the red pen, and yet, he never draws blood. Thanks for finding the story, wise one.

  I observed twenty-first-century teenagers in Brigham Leane’s classroom. The students amazed me, and this master teacher entranced me with a lesson on exponents. To add or multiply, that is the question.

  The brave folks at mdsupport.org generously shared their stories, including the triumph and challenge of living with AMD. Daniel L. Roberts is their fearless leader and author of The First Year: Age-Related Macular Degeneration: An Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed, a compassionate and practical handbook for those facing such a disruptive diagnosis. He read Seeing Things, along with Barbara Smith and Fiona Hall, to make sure I portrayed life with AMD. Any mistakes are solely mine.

  I gleaned all I know about broken ankles and growing up in Denver from Mimi Frank and Rebecca Frank, mother and daughter extraordinaire. Another cup of tea?

  I find the prospect of writing a novel without my critique group absolutely terrifying. I love you Sharon Bridgewater, Muriel Morley, and Darlia Sawyer! Death to the extraneous word!

  Helen and the ladies of the low-vision group entertained me royally at The Center for Independence in Grand Junction, Colorado. They demonstrate a brand of courage beyond my dreaming. Thanks for the honesty and the laughs, girls.

  When I needed to know about collisions involving air bags, Allison Bottke, Dave Lambert, and Tom Morrisey shared their harrowing stories. Hope those bruises have healed.

  Wade McDowell helped me understand elder care on a personal and compassionate lev
el because that’s the kind of man he is.

  Jennifer Murrell and Eusebia Garza filled in the blanks of my Spanish skills. ¡Muchas gracias, mi amigas!

  Coralie Bloom of the National Park Service at Great Smoky Mountains National Park enthralled me with the early history of the park. I’m going back there someday.

  O my Strength, I sing praise to you; you, O God, are my fortress, my loving God. (Ps. 59:17 NIV)

  “Some things you can’t find out; but you will never know you can’t by guessing and supposing; no, you have to be patient and go on experimenting until you find out that you can’t find out. And it is delightful to have it that way; it makes the world so interesting.”

  Mark Twain, Eve’s Diary

  Prologue

  You’re talking to the queen of skepticism right here.

  I roll my eyes over newspaper stories where teary-eyed folks report they’ve seen Jesus in a potato chip. That sort of hogwash sends me straight to the comics for a dose of reality. You don’t have to worry about me. I know Alley Oop doesn’t slide through time, but the inhabitants of Moo remind me of my friends in Ouray with their common sense and heave-ho attitudes, something sorely missing among the potato chip crowd. Honestly, someone isn’t rowing with both oars in the water.

  Let’s proceed with this understanding: God shaped the Grand Tetons with the power of his Word. No overcooked potato chip evokes that kind of awe. Sadly, some people fritter the good sense God gave them on happenstance and wishful thinking. Despite my adventures into the whimsical, I’m not one of them. Not that anyone can prove anyway.

  Because I’ve lived among the wild things all of my life, it’s not my habit to shrink back from anything. I’ve thrown snakes out of the house by their rattles and snatched a toddling son from the path of a charging moose, and there’s nothing meaner in nature than a moose cow if she doesn’t like the way you look. And I won’t shrink back from telling my story as soon as I hit my stride. You see, I like to think I’m a reasonable person. Chatting up my problems with a literary character scoots me several degrees east of rational as far as I’m concerned, so I’d kept mum about my visits with Huckleberry Finn. Until now.

  Who can keep a secret like that?

  Once word leaked that I chatted with Huck, the offers came pouring in to write my story. I suppose with so many Boomers out there sitting in orthopedic waiting rooms and making transoceanic flights, there’s a call for old-lady stories to make those folks feel better about themselves. Well, my story will certainly do that.

  One name-dropping literary agent wanted to represent me something fierce. She declared old-lady stories all the rage among reviewers and New York City publishing houses. It’s about time, is all I can say. Before I knew it, she’d sent me an old woman’s memoir about her life in Iowa during the Depression. Someone who thinks pretty highly of himself declared the book one of the best written last year. I don’t mean to cast aspersions on the author, but for a woman in her eighties she sure remembers a lot of details from the year she turned five years old. I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday, although I ate a piece of peach pie with a dollop of whipped topping afterward. I love that about getting older. I’m on my way to looking like Buddha, and I don’t care one lick.

  That’s enough stalling. The telling of this story won’t get any easier if I chase every stray thought, so I’d better get to it. Promise to give me a fair hearing and proceed.

  Chapter 1

  I stood at the top of the stairs kneading the newel post. The oven timer groaned from the kitchen below. Four pies—two apple, a cherry, and an elderberry—filled the house with a nutty sweetness, meaning the crust was golden and the sauce had thickened around the fruit. I’d finished my shower and started toward the kitchen long before the timer sounded, but now I stood frozen like a raccoon in the beam of a flashlight. Such bold marauders.

  Below me, the stairs were a mountainside of wildflowers—a swath of starry edelweiss and buttercups, lupine and red gilia—all growing among granite boulders and spiked grasses from the second-floor landing to the first floor. A breeze that neither lifted my apron nor jostled my curls, whipped the grass and set the flowers dancing.

  The timer grew more insistent. Nutty sweetness turned bitter, a sign the pies’ crusts had edged beyond golden to toasted. I closed my eyes, but the mountainside remained. I knew better. A few weeks earlier I’d sat on the top step, enjoying the deep purple of the lupine and watching a deliciously red ladybug crawl across a boulder, but I hadn’t had pies in the oven that day, only a load of towels in the dryer.

  The timer groaned on, sounding a bit tired from its unanswered call. I slid my foot down the step’s riser, willing my brain to ignore the flowery slope and to think of stairs, predictable and ordered. One step. Two steps. A boulder?

  “You’re not there,” I said to the boulder. “I can walk right through you, yes I can. And I will.”

  Fooling myself proved harder than I thought.

  I overstepped and missed the next stair. My ankle twisted and cracked like kindling. I fell forward, reached for the railing that had belatedly reappeared, but my knee hit the wooden stair hard, and my head bounced on the last two risers before I came to a stop. A hot poker of pain seared my ankle. I fumbled with my sneakers and screamed with the movement. With reluctant fingers, I felt a lump rising over my ankle bone. My foot lay at an unnatural angle. I writhed like a landed trout on the floor. I needed help, but moving only intensified the pain.

  Bee’s dog door slammed shut, and her claws tapped eagerly across the floor. She stopped, tilted her head as if to ask: What kind of game is this? She held a tennis ball in her mouth.

  You’ve got to be kidding. “Not now, Bee. Go away!”

  She slunk toward me, dropped the ball in my lap, and nosed my hand.

  My ankle screamed and so did I. “Bee!”

  She lapped at my face and made to sit across my lap. I pushed hard on her chest, but she lowered herself slowly to straddle my legs, all seventy pounds of her. With my ankle crying for attention, I debated who to call. I hated to make a fuss, but I knew the EMTs in town; Tom and Veryl liked nothing better than sounding the sirens.

  Then twinkling lights danced before my eyes, and the decision left my hands.

  Chapter 2

  It had taken no small amount of cajoling on my son’s part to convince me to recuperate at his home in Denver. Denver is a good three hundred miles from Ouray and light years from mountain living. Andy eventually agreed to bring Bee along, and I promised to bake him a strawberry-rhubarb pie once I felt up to it. In the end the fact that there’s a toilet on the ground floor of his home persuaded me, but Andy didn’t know that.

  My daughter-in-law Suzanne—Andy’s second wife of eight very long years—had already purchased an adjustable bed for my use. More than once over the years, while waiting for the Mylanta to do its trick around midnight, I’d reached for the telephone during a Craftmatic commercial. Anyway, that’s how I found myself ensconced in eiderdown pillows in my son’s fancy-schmancy guest bedroom with an attached bathroom.

  I lay flat on my back with Suzanne standing over me, hands deep in the pockets of the lab coat she wore over algae-green scrubs. She no longer wore her nearly black hair cut to her chin. Instead, she sported a Cleopatra do with thick, blunt bangs and hair that slid over her shoulders like silk. Andy stood with his back to me, looking out a glass door into the night. Tall, broad shouldered. So like his pa. Yet so not.

  “I’ve arranged everything,” Suzanne said. “You have a series of post-op appointments arranged with Dr. Milner. He’s known internationally for his work with world-class athletes. Fortunately his wife’s breast augmentation went splendidly, and he owes me. You’ll see him Tuesday.”

  What day is this? “Thank you for going to so much trouble, Suzanne.”

  She demonstrated the functions of the bed. With a hum, I rose to a sitting position. Much better. Bee nuzzled my hand. I fingered her ears like a worry stone. Another hu
m and my feet rose. A human taco, but the ache in my ankle receded.

  “Everything you need is on this nightstand,” she said, her voice a mix of Florence Nightingale and Old Mother Hubbard. My chest warmed. “Ring this bell for Lupe, our housekeeper. You may have to ring twice, but she’ll come eventually, or you’re to let me know. Here are your pain pills—it’s important to take them as scheduled. You don’t want the pain to get away from you, so even if you’re feeling good, take a pill at the scheduled time.”

  I’d already heard this speech innumerable times by my surgeon and a bevy of nurses.

  She continued. “And drink lots of water. Lupe will keep you supplied with plenty of chilled Evian.” She shook something rod-like at me that rattled. “I’ve divided out your blood pressure and cholesterol meds into a pill organizer.”

  I’m not helpless. “You’re very kind.”

  “No problem,” she continued. “And I’ve taken the liberty of prescribing a stool softener. Surgery can wreak havoc with digestion and elimination, especially since you won’t be very active for the next eight weeks.”

  “Six weeks,” I said a tad too eagerly. “I mean, my surgeon said six weeks.”

  Andy walked to the foot of the bed. “He said six to eight weeks, Ma.”

  “I’m a quick healer. Remember? I have the bones of a thirty-year-old. That’s from all the hiking and dancing.”

  Andy spoke slowly. “Ma, the break was bad. Both the fibula and tibia. We’re going to take this one day at a time.”