An Eye for an Eye

In February 2019, Dr. Susanna Park saved the vision in my right eye by removing a membrane that had been growing on its retina. The operation required general anesthesia and took over an hour while my head was secured in a brace to prevent it from moving at all. The membrane was covering a part of the retina like a tiny piece of plastic food wrap, no bigger than a typed capital "C". But as the membrane was developing, the retina formed to its wrinkles, which led to additional linear distortions in my sight. During the operation, Dr. Park peeled it off in pieces, and after, my vision became so much better as everything healed over weeks and months. I see close to twenty-twenty in my right eye now, but still, if I cover my left, Venetian blinds will appear wavy, and a vertical telephone pole will be wiggly as it rises. But that's a small concession to having everything in my right eye being fuzzy for the rest of my life.

Much later, I asked Dr. Park if she had a dog, and if I could do its portrait as a sliver of the gratitude I feel for what she had done for me. It is such a small offering. Dr. Park is one of the gentlest souls I've ever had for a doctor, and I couldn't imagine what kind of lucky dog had been part of her life. When she supplied me a single snapshot of her Muffin, I was taken aback.

While I could have guessed the dog would be small, I didn't guess how diminutive she would appear. This sense was heightened by the most salient feature of the image: Muffin had only one eye, and with the flash of the photo-taking, it was shown as a milky pink. I had work to do for all of us: no dog should be left in an image marred by a photographic flaw.

Muffin was seated on a black leather couch with some kind of festive decorations on her collar. I couldn't think of a background color that would do better, precisely because of her tentative posture. Blue, green, a beige darker than her coat? In the end, I let the decorations provide the modicum of the color for the painting.

And so here it is: a shy one-eyed, sweet little girl for my great and caring eye-surgeon.

And to make Muffin a little extra special, there's a heart, just to the left of her nose. I'm sure that was always there for Dr. Park.