First Glasses

I started wearing glasses when I was five, because I had amblyopia. The amblyopia - lazy eye - was treated with patches and exercises and bifocals. Imagine, bifocals on a five year old. My peers always thought my glasses were broken.

My mother has always been anti-frou frou, anti-pink, anti-rhinestones. She dressed her two girls in blue (and her boy child as well). When it came time to go get my first pair of glasses, she took me to the optician in the moderne building in the next town, where they pulled out a tray of child-sized frames. It was divided in half - rhinestone-bedecked pastel cat eyes on one side, sober-looking tortoise shell on the other. My mother picked out a pair of tortoise shell frames and proceeded to get into an argument with the optician. He insisted that "those are for boys, she can't wear those" and tried to force her to buy a pale blue number. My mother won - after all, she was paying for them.

I ended up wearing those glasses for four years - they appear in the class photos for third grade, but not fourth.

Not long ago, I found a loose photo floating around at my mother's house. In it, I'm nearly seven, my brother was four, and my sister was about a year & a half. And I'm wearing those glasses.

These days, I still wear glasses, but I've got a cunning rimless pair that disappear on my face. Over the weekend, I went to the optometrist because I felt like I couldn't see anymore. What did she recommend? Bifocals. I feel like I'm in kindergarten again.