3D Miracle

Gordon Atkinson's blog

We knew something was wrong with Lillian’s eyes shortly after she was born. One of them was turned inward. We assumed it could be fixed. We thought we’d hand her over to a doctor, and he or she would fix her. The day they told us her eyes would never be right is burned into my memory. Jeanene and I sat staring at each other in disbelief. No parent wants to hear the word “never.”

But no operation can give Lillian what her brain needed to develop in a very important window of opportunity that opened and closed in the early weeks of her life. Depth perception. She doesn’t have it. She never will. Lillian sees a flat world, much like the world you see on

a movie screen. Close one of your eyes and you’ll see what she sees. Open your eye again and you’ll see what she’s missing.

A couple of operations straightened out the eye that was turned inward, and I’m thankful for that. I realize that as disabilities go, this one is very slight. So many parents deal with much harder things. I know that. And yet, Lillian’s lack of depth perception has always been heartbreaking to me. Occasionally I open and close an eye and try to imagine not knowing what it’s like to see in 3 dimensions. I imagine her trying to park a car, trying to play tennis, trying to pick up a glass on the table without knocking it over. I wish she could open her eyes one day and have the world pop out at her. I wish she could stand in the middle of a snowstorm instead of seeing it on the movie screen that hangs forever in front of her face.

As Lillian got older, we talked about her vision. She learned that she is limited. She came to understand that she sees a flattened world while the rest of us are seeing something different. In some mysterious way, we can perceive that one thing is closer than another thing. But she couldn’t really know what it is to see depth. It was like explaining taste to a man with no tongue. It was like explaining green to someone who is blind. I mean, how do you explain a whole other dimension to someone?

And then we went to see Bolt together. It’s the latest Disney movie, and it came out in 3D. Modern 3D filmmaking is astonishing. It looks like you’re right in the middle of the action.

As the movie began, I was stunned to hear Lillian say, “Hey, I can see in 3D. Stuff is floating in front of me. This is so cool.”

And I knew she really could because she did the same thing everyone does the first time they see a 3D movie. She stuck her hand out to see if she could touch the images that seemed to be floating in front of her. It was a miracle. I spent the whole movie leaning over and saying, “Can you see that? See how that sticks out? See how you can tell things are closer? That’s how we see all the time. That’s what we see.”

And she was nodding. She was getting it. I was so happy. During the whole movie I kept imagining what it must be like for her to see this new thing. At one point she leaned toward me and whispered, “You guys go to normal movies and see like I do. Now I can go to the movies and see like you.”

When it was over, neither of us were sad. Lillian didn’t seem sad that she was going to lose this wonderful gift when the movie was over. And I was giddy with happiness knowing that my sweetie understands what it means to see depth.

Her eye doctor said that the images in the theater are so big that somehow Lillian’s brain can put them together in the right way. Her brain can normally fuse the images from each eye into a single image, but it just can’t take the next step and create depth. Except in a 3D theater, where somehow it all comes together for her.

On the way out of the theater she said, “That was fun, but I really wouldn’t like it if I always saw that way. I like my way of seeing things. I’m used to it.”

I loved hearing her say that. It gave me peace. It put me at ease, at least with this issue. We have such complicated lives, don’t we? Filled with all kinds of sorrows and joys. It feels like this one sorrow has been put to rest for me. I’m at peace with Lillian’s eyes. She knows what she sees. She knows what we see. And she’s fine with things just the way they are.

Bolt, by the way, is a fantastic movie. It seemed magical to me. Miraculous even. Disney hasn’t made a movie this good in a long time. It ranks up there with the best that Pixar has produced, if you ask me.

It might even be the greatest movie ever made.

rlp

I wrote two essays years ago about Lillian's eyes. Bifocals and Bifocals II.

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