Tiny details of life in a world full of wonders
Rummaging through my drawer, a black cord keeps me from closing it. I tug on it, and tied to a carabiner hook covered in green rust, a black funnel-shaped object appears with a lens at its narrow end. Its Bakelite body is missing a small triangular chip where the lens screws in, and the lens itself is chipped too. “Darn it!” I hear my father say as he bends down to pick it up from the floor. It is his jeweler’s loupe, which he used to touch up tiny imperfections left by dust particles on photos using a fine brush dipped in black or white ink.
I remember a day during summer vacation. I had been given a microscope for my birthday. While running through my aunt’s garden, I scrapped my knee. I ran into the house, curious to look at my blood. It was teeming with round red particles that moved!
Better not look at the dust on my desk, just in case it moves too… I lift the loupe and try looking through it toward my window. I move it closer and farther from my eyes until the inverted, tiny image of my village appears. That is how it reduces. I flip it over. At two centimeters, it enlarges the minuscule print on an instruction manual. Closing one eye, I hold the loupe in the other. I can’t see a thing until the object is about ten centimeters away.
I look at my finger, magnificently magnified. I am amazed by the landscape of fingerprint ridges and grooves. Did you know that papillary ridges are dotted with countless tiny pitted specks? I get close to my dog’s blue eyes. Around the black pupil, I see feathery strokes of sky blue, encircled by a soft bluish-white ring laced with delicate veins.
I laugh quietly to myself. I have completely forgotten what I was looking for in the drawer. Standing here with my father’s loupe, I realize it doesn’t matter anymore. For a moment, I am not just looking through a lens; I am looking through my father’s eyes at a world full of wonders, sharing the exact curiosity that made him pause and pay attention to the tiniest details of life. Without knowing it, this was what I needed to find all along.
