Maria likes sketching her surroundings while waiting for me on book tours, at doctor’s offices, and in hospitals during surgeries. She started this sketch in 2011 while waiting for me while I was giving a book talk. She never finished it but decided to take it to the cataract surgery center yesterday, where they fixed up the cloudy lens in my right eye and replaced it with an artificial lens called an intraocular lens, or IOL.

The surgery took about 10 minutes, and I see like a 20-year-old. They’ll work on the other eye in three weeks. I suspect there will be another sketch. This one is also on her blog, fullmoonfiberart.com.

She is forever the artist and has assembled a fantastic collection of what she calls “waiting sketches.”

This one is called “Flower Eye.” I love her sketches and hope she posts more of them on her blog, but this one is my favorite. It will go into her sketchbook, a record of how we live together. It keeps her from being bored and nervous. The sketches are extraordinary.