Why Revise?

Revision

Pronunciation: \ri-ˈvi-zhən\

Function: noun

1 a : an act of revising b : a result of revising / Synonym: alteration

2 : a revised version

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Revision, by literal definition, means to “re-see”.

When I teach, I urge my students to revise a piece numerous times before calling it “done”, and yet I always remind them that an author may be “done” writing a piece, but a piece is never “done” – it’s never complete, never finished. No matter how many times we look at something ---be it an essay, a character trait, a relationship, or even life itself-- if we try hard enough, we can “re-see” it from a new angle, with a different light, and then find some way, even if it’s hardly detectable to the naked eye, to make it a better form of what it already is.

The synonym for revision, as listed in Merriam Webster is “alteration”. Every day we are all, in some small way, being altered, altering, or on the brink of alteration; we are revising or being revised.

A week ago today, while having dinner with my mom, I was explaining the procedure Martyn would endure the following day while undergoing Lasik surgery on his eyes. We talked at length about how it was both scary (god forbid something happen), and exciting (glasses wearers: imagine the freedom of life without frames on your face!). During our discussion I mentioned that it was, in a silly and selfish way, sad for me. My mother looked bewilderingly at me and I explained:

Since the day I met Martyn, he has had a pair of glasses on his face. When we took our first date (I, 17. He, 19) to the Macroni Grill and then to Crossgates Mall to see Hope Floats, he had glasses on his face. When he came to visit me in college, he entered my first dorm room with glasses on his face. When he helped me pack my last of three college apartments up and move back home to my parents’, he had glasses on his face. When he signed his signature on the papers to buy our house, he had glasses on his face. When he stood beside me in a kennel of eight puppies and we decided on Joey, he had glasses on his face. Martyn with glasses is the only Martyn I have ever known, I explained. And as the weeks dwindled to days, and the days dwindled to hours, I mourned the loss of Martyn as I know him – with glasses.

Of course, as you can imagine, the expression on my mother’s face at the tail end of this explanation was one of pity. You sorry little soul, I am sure she was thinking. But, my mother being my mother, opened her lips and simply said: “I have never known anyone to overthink ‘final moments’ as intensely as you do.”

And she is right.

As I look back over my past, I remember them all: hitting the last chord as my fifth grade class sang “One Moment in Time” at the final, farewell assembly at Elsmere School; saying goodbye to my childhood playmate Patrick Thompson at the corner of Ridge and watching him walk off down Kenwood for the last time, and onto another street, and then into a new life in Great Barrington, Massachusetts; knocking on Tara’s bedroom door for the last time, on the last night she slept at home before going away to Springfield College; hitting the light switch and turning around to view chairs overturned onto desks in Mr. Straw’s classroom at Bethlehem High School, then closing the door and walking down the hall and out the front entrance of BCHS with Nicole Greer for the very last time; placing the final items in our friend Matt’s bread delivery truck and pulling out of my parents’ driveway with the last load of my belongings to be moved four miles away and into my first home; the last hug I gave to Meghan the last time I saw her before she left town again...

the list goes on…

Life is full of lasts, isn’t it? I am on the cusp of a phase in my life that is bound to bring on many, many lasts and I know these lasts will be very difficult for a girl who doesn’t do well with alteration, so my resolution is to attempt my best at re-seeing beside Marty, at recognizing that, as they say, the beauty of each “last” is the start of a new first.

With the Lasik behind him, he is experiencing firsts every day: laying down on the coach and placing his head down on the pillow without crushing the stem of his glasses against his temple is among one of his most exciting “firsts”. Equally thrilling is waking up and wiping the sleep from his eyes and seeing clear across the room without aid, or painting our newly renovated bathroom without having to reach to wipe splotches of blue off his lenses. And I look forward to all of the firsts he has yet to experience: waking at 6am, unzipping the door to the tent and exiting for a morning pee, and being able to see the sun rise clear down the length of Lake George, or throwing on any pair of non-prescription sunglasses to shield the afternoon light that reflects brightly off the lake as he cruises along in the boat.

He is re-seeing. Re-seeing = Re-vision.

…And as the days move one to the next and I, too, revise (both by choice and by force), I will strive to be as engaged with my own personal revision process as I urge my students to be.