These Eyes

I turned forty once. Not that long ago. Well not that long ago considering, one year to forty seems like nothing.

Anyway I turned forty and somewhere about then I noticed that I couldn't see to thread a needle if the light was dim..Then I couldn't see to quilt or cross stitch. I got headaches from trying. I got some cheap reading glasses, in the wrong power and continued, for awhile anyway. Then the season of sitting and waiting at swimming/gymnastics/whatever kid activity gave over to the season of running one kid to one activity followed by another kid to another activity and if I was lucky only driving around once in circles to pick them each up instead of throwing another kids or two into the traffic pattern.

I mostly quit having time to do needlework. I kind of lost interest and just started reading to fill the spaces in between the moments of my busy life.

And I forgot where I put the first pair of reading glasses.

But my eyes didn't forget. They just kept getting slowing worse until my favorite hobby, reading, started to be affected.

The year I turned 44, I talked with the optometrist in the ophthalmologist's office as she measured me for new contacts. She mentioned mono vision contacts as an option. "Some people have problems getting use to them, but you could try them," she said.  I wasn't sure that I was ready. So I just got my normal terribly near sighted/astigmatized correction and I moved on. Things were about the same for about six months and then they got awful.

For those of you readers who are blessed to have "perfect eyesight" and who are still younger than forty, let me explain a little bit. I have near sighted eyes. Which meant when I was younger I could see things, like a book or stitching up close without a problem. I could not see across the room. Additionally I have a fairly severe astigmatism, which adds an extra blur to things. But if I am wearing glasses or contacts, I can see just fine. Or I could until I got into my forties.

You, dear reader, may think that you will never face these problems because you have never had problems seeing. YOU ARE WRONG. Your perfect eyes will, somewhere around age 45, betray you. And you won't be able to read your newspaper, book, kindle, phone, OR eventually computer screen. You will get headaches, and it will stink. You will know you have arrived when you constantly hand your phone/pill bottle/assembly instructions to your child and say, "What does that say?"

I knew that some day I would have to deal with this. This past September the day came along. I just couldn't stand the headaches anymore. I went into the ophthalmologist's office and said, "Tell me about mono vision contacts." And she did.

We determined to make my left eye the far vision eye, and the right eye was the close up worker. I ordered one right contact. And left the office with her advice on making this a success ringing in my mind, "Whatever you do. Don't think too much about it."

So that was my strategy. "Don't think too much about it."
It is a silly strategy, but it worked. When ever my mind seemed to be overloaded by information, I just told it to stop thinking so much about it. And within two days, I had eyes that worked again.

It is great to be able to see. At least until I need trifocals. Do you think I would look funny with a third eye in the middle of my forehead?

Bridges to Belonging

Fifth and sixth grade brought friendship with peers into my life. I started to feel like I belonged. I started to feel important.

I'd gone to elementary school with a large group of girls. Learned to make friends with them. We went to each others homes. We had parties. It was fun.

Yet we had moments that signaled the problems to come. More than one of us had leadership abilities. In fifth and sixth grade I could feel the tension between the different girls who wanted to lead. Heck I was one of them, fighting practically invisible battles to be chief.

So off we went to White Mountain Junior High and racing hormones. I don't remember when it started, but early in the first semester Liz decided that she was done with Kim. (I have changed all of their names.)

She, Liz, probably thought she had good reason to exclude Kim from our lunch table. Kim's family was imploding. Divorce, drugged out older siblings, and a total lack of family values were all involved, but Kim herself was salvageable if she'd had friends inviting her to a safe, higher place. Or maybe she would still have run off to be a bar girl.

I tried to convince the group to be kind and make room for her at our lunch table, and the next day I found no room there for me.

Painful doesn't even begin to describe the level of feelings I experienced. I had worked so hard to be kind and keep everyone involved when Liz had tried to take over and run things her way in elementary schools. She'd had mean moments then and few of us had avoided being in her sights. Yet despite the  efforts I'd made for them in the past, none of them went out on a limb to save me and insist that I get a spot at lunch.

I was crushed, and worse I had to figure out how to gracefully find another place to eat each day.

I eventually found a lonely girl, new to the school, who moved after that year. Each day I began eating with her. We spent time at each others homes. She taught me more about black eye liner than I ever needed. And we were friends.

The next semester, my schedule changed and I was now eating third lunch. A whole different group of people was there in the lunch room during the last lunch period.A whole different group who had come from other elementary schools. A whole new group who welcomed me in at lunchtime.

Finally after months of struggling alone, I felt surrounded by friends again. I felt like I belonged.

Bridges to the Past

Last night in the midst of doorbells dinging to announce the arrival of amazingly clad beggars of sweetness, I finished reading Bridge to Terabithia for the second time. The first time I read it, I was a fifth grader just like the characters in the story.

Fifth grade was a big year for me. I was an extremely shy child. Kindergarten went okay, but by first grade and second grade, I was so stressed out by the social scene, that I regularly threw up in order to avoid school. Fortunately I was smart enough to keep up academically, but I was an emotional basket-case when it came to fitting into the group of kids at school.

In third grade an awesome teacher helped me come out of my shell by allowing me to spend most recesses talking to her during playground duty. She was probably bored to death, but that understanding ear made all the difference. In fourth grade, my leadership skills started to slowly emerge thanks to the help of another teacher. By fifth grade, the crippling effects of shyness were in the past and I had become part of the group.

But fifth grade brought more challenges. Now I was part of the group, but each individual member was growing and exerting their experience and ideas on where we all should be going. Sometimes that lead us to being kind to one another and others outside the group. Sometimes it didn't.

The fifth grade teachers swapped students for different subjects to level the classes. My homeroom teacher, LaPrele Robins, was a gracious, warm woman who loved math and reading cook books. She was a grandma who grew geraniums in the classroom and loved all her students. She taught me everything except reading. Ms. (the first Ms. I ever had) Harrison was single. She loved literature and probably loved teaching, but she mostly scared me to death.

We read The Lemming Condition, Rabbit Hill, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Bridge to Terabithia independently as part of our reading curriculum. Then we were required to create a project to express our experience with the book. I hated those projects. Even now I'd rather write or talk about my feelings, but glue, glitter, paint, or paper mache was the requirement.

Despite the fact that I was basically petrified to be in her class for that hour every day, Ms. Harrison assigned books that I loved reading. Still this second time through Bridge to Terabithia shows me that I really didn't get a very deep understanding of the themes of those books. I reread The Lemming Condition in the last couple years too. I think she was making a statement about the condition of fifth - ninth grade girls in general with Lemming and Bridge, but I totally missed that the first time around.

Bridge is about a boy named Jesse who doesn't fit into his family and doesn't really feel important or cared for at school. Leslie, a girl, moves in down the road. Jesse's plan for the year was to be The Fastest Fifth Grade Runner. Leslie runs faster. Jesse finds himself back down in the unrecognized masses, but then Leslie, who has been trying to reach out to him as a friend, finally makes it through his defenses. Together they create a world and begin find a place to belong. There is more to the story, but you should read it and experience it yourself if you haven't already.

Pre and middle teens, girls especially, are brutally unkind to each other. They are trying to find themselves and define their place in space. The way they often do that is by crushing someone else and taking their space. That all is dealt with in this book.

I had those same experiences in fifth and sixth and seventh grade. And again in tenth. It was hard. I learned somewhere along in there that I have infinite worth regardless of what the group thinks, says, or does. They may not be listening to or following me, but that doesn't make my ideas or direction wrong. And their direction isn't necessarily wrong for them either. But it can be really hard if you know that you aren't suppose to be following them. And worse if they bar you from following them. Rejection stinks.