Uncle Lee’s Glass Eye
For the Veterans
(Recited on November 13, 2018 at the Senior Center Veterans Celebration)
Cousin Julie just called:
Did your dad really have a glass eye?
Oh, the memories of that glass eye…
Nothing could really replace Dad’s
Ever-changing eyes
Blue in his Air Force tie
Hazel in his Navy sailor whites
Green in the camo pants
He wore in the garden
As his hoe attacked the weeds.
His hand-eye coordination was astounding:
With a hoe, a bat, or a golf club
He could hit anything and hit it
Anywhere he wanted.
He put a spin on the ball
So it would land and stick
Or roll away.
He’d say, "I’m putting a bit of English
On it" like the British Open announcer.
Eye squinted, he read the green
And curved the ball ever so
Gently into the hole –
The touch on the club
Was light and elastic.
(He painted the putter club head gold,
Then sprayed gold glitter on it. Why?)
I never saw him shoot a gun
Except in Disneyland’s Frontierland,
There, he rested the rifle on his shoulder
Squinted his eye, and pulled the trigger.
"Oh yeah!" he’d say as Goofy’s head fell over.
He must have been a great shot-
Many marksman medals in
Mom’s type case cabinet.
He hunted as a boy in Kansas
Signed up for the war at 17
And saw the ocean for the first time
As he chugged to Okinawa.
Getting Dad to talk about the war
Was harder than picking up a single
Grain of rice with chopsticks-
He learned to love Chinese food
The spicier, the better, he’d say.
But he wouldn’t talk about
The Japanese box full of
Coins, a medallion, and a large
Machine-gun bullet that showed
Signs of extreme heat.
What Dad would do
Is play basketball on the driveway
Teaching me and you, Julie, to put
Backspin on the ball
Creating a shooter’s bounce.
"They had a hoop on the aircraft carrier
That picked me up," he told us once.
Why did you get picked up?
"Kamikaze" was the only word we got out of him.
Like a Harlem Globetrotter, he’d dribble
And twist his body around and launch
A bomb that had no chance of making it.
But he’d yell, "I’ve sunk another."
We never beat him in Battleship, either.
One time in the driveway when I was about six,
He started yelling, covered his eye, and
Ran to the gutter, picking up something.
"My glass eye just popped out!" he said.
"Oh daddy, lemme see" I said.
He kept his fist closed, but his eyelid was
Flipped up, red and gruesome.
I screamed.
"Want to see my eye, or
Should I put it back?" he asked,
Serious, no dimples showing.
No twinkle in his eye.
He turned around, popped it in,
Then returned to grin and grab me.
"It’s from the war" he’d say, but no more.
When I was home one summer
And you were a visiting 9-year-old
He pulled the same trick on you, Julie.
But, he winked at me, because I
Knew the glass eye wasn’t real.
In his last days, I learned the
Melted bullet was from the kamikaze
That strafed the ship
Before it crashed into the captain’s bridge.
As his ship went down,
Dad grabbed a bullet rolling down the deck,
Burned his hand, jumped overboard, and swam.
So many other memories he never shared:
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Korea
Those sights are buried with him.
And the glass eye? It must have been
One of the many tricks he played
To deal with the tense boredom of
Waiting for the war: shooting hoops,
Hitting mythical golf balls into the Pacific,
rolling and capturing baseballs on the listing ship’s deck.
Or, maybe that glass eye
Kept the horrible sights he’d seen
From leaking out of the corners
Of his memory.