I saw the mountains after cataract surgery

Dear Delyara, My vision had become cloudy so slowly that I did not realise how much of the world had disappeared. I stopped recognising faces across rooms and assumed the mountains were hidden by weather. A charity clinic arranged cataract surgery. The morning after the bandage was removed, the nurse led me outside. The sky looked painfully bright. Then I saw the mountains. Not pale shapes, but sharp white ridges with shadows between them. I began laughing and crying at once. I had lived beneath those mountains for sixty-nine years and had forgotten their edges. On the walk home, I noticed individual leaves, cracks in walls, and the blue thread in my granddaughter’s scarf. Recovery was not dramatic in the operating room. It happened afterward, when familiar things returned carrying details I had not known I was missing.