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GENESSA -- SPECS! LADY G AND HER GLASSESI think I wore glasses in the womb. No, I couldn't have; I almost fell out of Mom in the cab racing to the hospital, five weeks early. Specs would've held me back. But it was barely six months later the smallest pair that could be found were tied to my little face. No eye chart was needed to see my vision was compromised, and not just by the incubator that was the be my first home. No, my bespectaclement was not only predictable; it had been predicted. My mother and father met on a blind date. No, really! I don't know who set them up; maybe one of my dad's army buddies. He arrived at her doorstep, rang the bell and was met not ya parent but by the lady herself. His eyes darted this way, hers that way; both my parents-to-be were cross-eyed. I don't know if they even really got a good look at each other in that first, certainly shy moment. He handed her a gardenia corsage, perhaps pinned it on her. By coincidence, she had chosen to anoint herself with gardenia perfume. Off they went, to the dance. Both of my parents loved to dance, not just in their youth but into what oldish age they achieved. I don't know if they were especially good at dancing, but that first night, Mom thought Dad was fabulous. He swept her off her feet. In truth, he was light on his because her perfume, combined with the corsage, was literally sweeping him off both his feet and the floor and a good deal of his head; he was dizzy and gardenia-doped. (Dorothy Parker once wrote, wittily but inaccurately, "Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses." Had this been true, I would never have been born, and having been born almost six decades ago, I would today still be a virgin.) When the couple became engaged, a doctor, possibly the one who drew their blood for the requisite test, declared that if they had 100 children they would be buying 100 pairs of glasses. Surely he meant per year. Certainly he was correct in his assessment of the ocular situation. Thus it was a foregone conclusion that I would need glasses as soon as I could hold my neck up. At six months I couldn't yet walk, but I sure could talk. I crawled all over the eye doctor's waiting room floor, chatting people up and freaking them out. I'd introduce myself politely and articulately, and as I understand it, they'd head for the hills, or at least wish there were hills about to which they could readily head. I especially enjoyed the illustrated edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verse I encountered in that waiting room. That may have been later; my relationship with that room was longterm. I had no special fear of Doctor Adler or his optical equipment. (Nor was I at that time afraid of needles; indeed, whenever Dr. Sharkus, the family doctor, gave me a shot, I was then ushered into the kitchen -- for he practiced out of a home office -- where his sisters gave me cookies. I was terrified, on the other hand, of the precarious winding stairway I had to negotiate to reach the bathroom. That stairway has influenced decades of nightmates.) I don't remember being afraid when, at the age of three, I was prepped for surgery to shorten a muscle in my lazy left eye. I might have been; it couldn't have been all that traumatic, though, or I'd remember. I remember everything else. I remember awakening during the surgery itself. I remember a needle rapidly approaching my eye. (It was most likely a scalpel but for that I wouldn't have had a word, or even a concept.) I have no direct memory of being strapped down to the hospital bed, to prevent me from touching my eye, but I have a sub-memory, if you will, of that helplessness. I remember quite well the eye patch I had to wear for a while after the surgery. I no longer do well at the eye doctor's office. I don't do well with anyone touching, or even approaching, my eyes. I don't do well with needles, even if offered cookies afterwards. I don't awaken in a cold sweat night after night, envisioning sharp sticks flying determinedly my way, but I have post-traumatic stress disorder all the same. I do, however, also have a fabulous relationship with my glasses. (I've never named them, which is odd, considering that as an older child, teen and even young adult I tended to name everything I owned, including my furniture.) I never went through the agony some children experience when, after a short lifetime of going about barefaced, they are informed they need corrective lenses. I was teased plenty in school, and got called all kinds of names, but for some reason, four-eyes was not among them. My glasses have always been a part of my face, albeit a detachable part; I would never consider wearing contact lenses, even if I did not feel faint at the very thought of a bit of plastic (or a speck of dust) touching my eyeball. My face looks and feels naked without specs. On the other hand, there have been occasions when I came downstairs, still mostly asleep, and presented my face to what tiny bit of the world might have been watching by opening the front door and emerging just far enough to reach for the mail. My mother told me I was brave. Not used to receiving compliments from her, I asked why. She explained that it was brave of me not to mind being seen without my glasses, as my eye crossed as badly as hers. She confessed that she, herself, would be embarrassed to be seen that way. You may put this in perspective by also noting that my mother was equally disinclined to be seen without makeup, and quite a bit of it at that. My cat, Micky, was enamored of my glasses. He eyed them for a long time and finally, one night, stole them off my night table. He played with them until they were a mangled work of feline artistry, then buried him in his litter box. I fell in love with a bespectacled man; we are having no children, not, as you might imagine, to avoid buying 100 pairs of glasses, but because we are both beyond our childbearing years. We are owned by a dog and quite a few cats, but need buy no lenses for them. He has been known to search frantically for his glasses, since he removes them to read; sometimes he finds them in his hand. I, on the other hand, only lose my glasses if, while I am asleep, one of the cats knocks them out of their bedside receptacle, which can be, but rarely is, snapped shut. I don't like to fumble with the snap when I'm not fully awake. My vision, in my dreams, is perfect. I wish my waking life were as clear, as vivid, as my dreaming world, despite how blurry that dreaming world becomes as soon as I leave it. However, if I am myself in a dream (sometimes I am not), I am wearing glasses. Were I not, I just wouldn't be me.  |
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