His hands move through the air, reaching. Out and then back again. The wrinkled fingers nearly touch, tremble, and move apart. It is a motion that could be mistaken for some kind of prayer, the wafting of incense nearer, to wreath his head.
In the background are the shouts of college students at the bar, watching the game. Next to us, a group of women, middle-aged, laughs at an octave higher than normal, their faces flushed.
Our table is close to the door. A few steps, though it felt much longer, as my grandma and I led my grandpa to his chair, one of us at each elbow.
“Forward,” my grandma whispered, “now turn 90 degrees.” We placed his hands on the chair. “Here’s the back.” He traced his hands along the lacquered spindles. “Here’s the seat.” His hands moved across the indented wood.
Now his hands grope for the tall glass of Diet Coke, and I wonder if he has always had that fine tremor, or if I am only seeing it now that his eyes are shut. An audience member looking to a different part of the stage as the lights shift.
After a few moments, my grandma slides him the drink. His mouth opens and his tongue moves through the air, finding the straw. He takes a deep drink. “To die for,” he says with nearly his typical gusto and leans back.
My grandma and I smile. Some of the tension begins to ease from our shoulders. This is new frontier for all of us. It is his first time out since leaving the hospital. It is our first time taking a blind man to a restaurant.
Later we will learn to ask for his drink to be put in a cup with a lid. We’ll ask for extra napkins, preferably cloth, before the food comes. We’ll pick restaurants where the bathroom is on the ground floor, where the tables are not above a flight of stairs. Later still, we’ll experiment with entrees that require utensils.
But today we sit under the lowered lights and read aloud the menu, its plastic cover curling at the edges. When our pizza comes, we take the greasy slices in our hands and bless the fingers that can tear, the taste buds that recognize what sight cannot. We chew more slowly, choose our words with more care.
And for just a moment I close my eyes and let the clatter of dishes, the rise and fall of voices grow louder, filter through my senses like sun through stained glass, throwing color against stone walls. And for now, it is enough.
