I Can See Clearly Now

I don’t know when exactly I started losing my perfect 20/20 vision. Probably about the same time that denial took a backseat to a stable metabolism and pre-menopausal hormone surges.

Pass the Oreos, please.

I use to secretly snicker at Fiddledaddy, sitting there reading in bed with glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. OLD MAN, I glibly thought to myself, holding my own book three feet from my face so that the words were not blurred.

One night, he threw me a pair of his spectacles, “Put these on”. “Pffffft. I don’t need those,” I sniffed, letting them fall onto the sheets. When he left the room for a snack, or to find the remote, or something equally important, I reached over and tried the offending glasses on. Curiosity usually gets the best of me.

“OH MY LORD, I CAN SEE! IT’S A MIRACLE. LOOK, LOOK, THERE ARE WORDS ON THESE PAGES. AND I CAN READ THEM. WHILE ACTUALLY HOLDING THE BOOK AND NOT STANDING UP AND LOOKING AT IT FROM AFAR. SAINTS IN HEAVEN, I CAN SEE, AGAIN!”

“I told you so,” as he sauntered back into the room.

Pride is just wrong. On so many levels.

Now we have no fewer than 10 pair of reading glasses stashed around the house. Placed strategically among the cookbooks, magazines, bills, and computer desks. I believe there is even a pair in the master bath. For the high end reading material.

Lately I’ve noticed that reading glasses are walking away on their own, and ending up in some rather out of the way places. Like Emme’s bedroom. She insists that she too needs them to see. If you’ll recall, she has been learning Braille, should her eyesight be taken from her, not unlike Mary’s was from the Little House series. And she is quite certain that she needs glasses.

Unfortunately, our coke bottle thick reading glasses have the unhappy affect of causing her to walk into walls. And little brothers. Etc. And people, before you say anything, we did have her eyes checked the last time she went through this phase. Over $100.00 later, we discovered that her eyesight is perfect.

In her defense, this made me think back to a time in my youth that I was convinced I needed glasses. My parents too took me to see an Optometrist. And I may or may not have fudged the test a little. And I ended up with a pair of groovy tortoise shell glasses, with “DeeDee” etched in gold ink in the top right hand corner of the lens. I wore them for all of 3 weeks, when I tired of them and decided that my vision was perfect after all. Oh happy day.

Boy, were my parents happy with me!

It seems that hypochondria may be genetic.

Who knew?

So, armed with all of this knowledge. And not wanting to part with another $100.00, Fiddledaddy gave Emme a pair of large wire rimmed spectacles with plain glass in them. From his theater days. She looks like a bug. Actually, she looks remarkably like my mother in them, which couldn’t be more cosmically perfect. But, it seems to have done the trick. She’s happy as can be and wears them everywhere. And as a lovely byproduct, she let us know that the insects stay out of her eyes now.

But we have two rules which she must adhere to. She has to take them off whenever she goes to the bathroom (no need for details here) and she must remove them when roller skating in the house.

You heard me.

I allow my children to roller skate in the house.

You see, if they were to only be able to roller skate outside, I would have to go with them. And since it’s 135 degrees outside, um, no. I have no problem with roller-skating indoors. As long as no one runs over mommy’s toes. She sees more clearly now, so that is no longer a problem.

Since hindsight is often 20/20, I’ve been looking a little more closely at my own girlhood, in order to better understand my oldest daughter while helping her to navigate her own way in this world.

Wearing princess roller skates, wire rimmed glasses, and a big toothless smile that absolutely lights up my day.