The mail had been delivered. I wondered what was here besides junk.  Now and then some interesting junk would appear among the mass of stuff.  I would like to know what part if it was worth looking at.  Items with large, bold print on the cover were manageable and some could be tossed without the bother of opening.  Other pieces needed to be opened to determine their fate.  I put the things I wanted to read on my magnifier, which is a closed circuit TV mounted above a zoom camera, with a movable table beneath it. I opened the pieces of mail that didn’t make it to the trash and placed them, one at a time on the movable table.  I zoomed in to a readable size so that I could decide if I wanted to read it.

Even with the magnifier reading was difficult.  I read like a first grader.  Only a small part of a page could be seen on the screen and the table needed to be moved often and I frequently lost my place.  The other problem was my eyesight.  Besides looking dim and not well focused, longer words appeared to be disconnected, having a beginning and an end but no middle.  I could guess at some but to be sure I had to focus below the word.  It was a slow and tedious process.

“I wish I could read a newspaper without this machine,” I often said.  If my wish were to come true I could read a book as I used to do.  I could read my own stories.  I could walk through a flower garden and see the beauty of the blooms.  I could recognize a face across the table.  I could even drive a car.  I could see lots of new things that I can only imagine based on things in my memory.

I wish my children lived closer together.  They are scattered from here to Florida to Virginia and Maryland.  In the past I have managed to see them all about every year by getting them together at a resort.  It seems harder to do that every year.  If they lived within a half a day’s drive we could all see each other much easier.  I have always envied people who could do that.  Until my wish comes true I reckon we’ll just have to keep working at it.

Mountains were part of my life for my first twenty years.  I loved being surrounded by mountains, seeing long shadows across the valleys long before sunset.  The gradual greening of the mountainsides in the spring and gorgeous colors of autumn cannot be mimicked anywhere else.

What’s on the other side of the mountain? Usually it’s another mountain and maybe a valley and great scenery.  I wish there were some mountains around here.

I wish…Oh, I forgot, three wishes, wasn’t it?  Remember the old adage “If wishes were horses then beggars might ride”.  I wonder what happened to the fairy with the magic wand.