I had an eye appointment today.

I drove to the strip mall optical boutique that happens to employ an eye doctor.  I reminded myself that this annual routine is mundane, less stress than getting my car tuned. I rarely hear bad news, nothing but a few tweaks here or there to the lens prescription. I buy updated frames or more boxes of contacts and go on.

But today I was cranky about my visit. I had been compelled there by need rather than maintenance. I had spent the last few months fanning papers in front of my face, moving them back and forth as if conjuring fortunes, squinting, lifting my glasses up and down and complaining incessantly of bad fonts and the absurdity of 10 point types. Finally friends and coworkers threatened an intervention, I was to go to the eye doctor or shut up. Silence is more difficult, so there I was.

I have had glasses since third grade. Back then the issue was the chalkboard. I could focus perfectly on the books that I plowed through faster than most kids in my class. But discussions bored me, so I drifted and propped books up in my desk, lifting the top a few inches and leaning back so I could continue to read as the teacher stood up front, my hand occasionally creeping through the crack to turn a page. Inevitably the teacher would ask a question and I would stare blankly. The jig was up. They supposed that my inattention was due to bad eye sight rather than lack of interest, and although the books in the desk continued through junior high, I was carted off to the eye doctor.

My memories of this visit are tinged with romantic tragedy, indicative of a seven year old living more in pages than playgrounds. I did not have the usual myopia; I had a storybook myopia that cast my eyes as heroes in an epic journey of brotherhood and devotion. My right eye might have been a lazy eye at one time, unable to keep up with rigors of growing up my head. Just as the right eye decided to give in and wander in the classic diagnostic manner, the left eye rallied and did more than its share of the work. This allowed the right eye to progress at a slower pace and get back on track, no longer prone to laziness. But the left eye had strained too hard and was now worn out, nearly blind from the noble effort of carrying the right eye for so long. Therefore the bad eye was now better and the good eye was now bad having sacrificed itself for the good of the pair.

I admired my left eye. I could hear it cough slightly at the exertion of looking around, pale, slightly consumptive, yet always thoughtful in the face of gloom. I was proud of my right eye as well, for staying put and persevering so as not to be thought of as a slacker. The right eye was the perky cheerleader to the knowing solemnity of the left. My new glasses were a badge of honor. They were a way of letting my eyes know that I supported their suffering and that we were in this together. It was the least I could do, considering what they had been through.

Whether or not this scenario could be medically supported, that I believed my eyes were martyrs of God tucked quite beautifully with the overall world view of my childhood. I was different in so many ways, of course I would see differently as well. I was not even concerned with teasing. I provided so many targets for the school yard bullies—a stuttering book worm with goofy clothes, fuzzy hair, and scarred bottom lip—being called “four eyes” was almost pedestrian in comparison. My peculiar askew eyesight allowed me to view myself, especially under duress, as special rather than strange.

Thanks to modern technology my left lens no longer extends beyond my frames. Each side is as thin as the other and yet I can see far away with the same clarity as I did with my first glasses, chalk boards lessons still distinct. The problem is I can no longer read the book propped at close distance. I can’t discern a menu, the label on the bottom of a dinner plate, a number in a phone book. With my glasses I can read if I hold the words no closer than twelve inches in front of my face and no more than thirty. I have a horizontal corridor of vision around my head like a ring around Saturn. It is frustrating and worse, has no explanation more dramatic than age. My eyes are getting old.     

I feel betrayed by this development. It is one thing to believe you trudged through snow and hunger and pestilence and battlefields and ache with pain of a hundred sorrows. It is another thing to know you are stiff because you moved the sofa yesterday. My ancient tendency to frame all events through the gaze of a unique and specific fantasy has blurred as time goes on. The jig is up. I am becoming just another middle aged woman with reading glasses.

The doctor was a tiny Chinese woman who asked all the usual questions of A versus B or 1 versus 2. She didn’t wear a white coat, moving with efficient ease. She told me that I have several choices. I can keep using my regular glasses and take them off to read close up. I can wear contacts and use reading glasses as needed. Or I can buy progressive glasses which are like old fashioned bifocals without lines. The first two options mean I am always taking glasses on and off, the third means I keep them on but lose peripheral vision. As if she was recommending treatments for a serious disease, she told me to go home and think about it.

It is silly really—changes in eyesight are as natural as grey hair and sagging skin. And hopefully I am still peaking in my timeline, not yet closer to the end than the beginning. But today, sitting in the parking lot, holding a funny pair of purple cat eye magnifying glasses, I had a very clear glimpse into the next era of my life. As a kid I wanted to see myself and my contributions as separate from the fray and utterly original. As I mature, I can’t help but notice how very much like other people I really am. This insight is not heroic or comforting. I may share this shifting, altered vision with many, but I am new to such connections. I see my peers not too close, not too far, best at arm’s length.