Of Lasik, lighters and leaves: a family snapshot

Before the trip to London turned all seriously Jewish, it was, according to Gabe, "the best vacation ever." The One True Wife, the Daughters, Gabe and I were guided for three days by Oldest Daughter to all sorts of London wonders. The British Museum, the Natural History Museum, Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum (I missed that one, but it was a huge hit with Gabe), the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Camden Market, Borough Hall Market (where we were filmed tasting a young chef's creations for a UKTV cooking show), tea in Kensington Gardens, and a mediocre but visually beautiful production of The Lion King were among the highlights. Trivia: Did you know that London's museums now charge no admission?

Gabe, still captivated by his recently completed 6th-grade leaf identification project, was still bent on collecting leaves. He kept diving on specimens he hadn't found stateside and dreaming of turning in a project that had leaves from Europe.

While the daughters have sophisticated and fairly established tastes, Gabe's tastes are only now emerging: he is a redneck. Either that or he has a great future as an ATF agent. His principal passions are cars, weapons and lighters. And in the markets we visited, he went on a very focused search for the lighter of his dreams.

Did you know that old lighters are collectors' items? That lighters, like watches, can be amazingly cheap and ridiculously expensive? A vendor at the one market stall showed us an old Dunhill lighter with a built-in miniature clock that he was about to sell to a doctor for ten thousand dollars.

In the end, Gabe bought a lighter (without lighter fluid, of course) that felt right in his hand, that made that important, shmik sound when you opened it, and that was black and shiny. It's his talisman.

After the rest of the family went home on Sunday, I had some one-on-one time with Oldest Daughter, who is -- lo and behold -- a woman. (When did that happen?) She is ambitious and focused and introspective and very, very wise for her age. She gave me more advice -- more dispassionate, considered counsel -- than I gave her. I felt I probably ought to pay her for it, so at the end of my trip I gave her my extra pounds (money; not, alas, weight).

Back on this side of the Atlantic, the wife had Lasik surgery yesterday. This would normally not merit a mention, but two weeks ago, in her pre-op exam, the wife passed out, and they briefly had trouble finding a pulse (Rabbi Tatz, a doctor and medical ethicist, told me that pressure on the eyeball can cause a sudden drop in blood pressure). So they rescheduled the operation for yesterday, and the surgeon and attending nurses approached the wife the way a florist would handle a rare orchid.

I sat in the next room and watched the procedure, via a closed-circuit camera affixed to the doctor's forehead. I sat amazed (and, OK, a little queasy) as, one by one, the Wife's eyes were propped open, her tear ducts sealed, the cornea peeled back and lasered, and everything cleaned up, unfolded and put back in place.

On the drive home from the procedure, the Wife was already marveling at the clarity of small details. I am still on London time, so I'm writing this at 3:30 AM CDT; she's upstairs, sleeping in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar-type goggles, looking forward to waking up and, presto, seeing everything. Here's hoping.

In a few hours, the day will begin; Gabe will shuffle down to the breakfast table, lighter in hand; the Wife will be thrilled at being able to do her morning exercise without glasses on; and I'll read the paper, drink coffee, and be grateful for it all.

--T.A.