2021
one more
maura @ 10:11 pm
It’s the weekend and I am adjusting to my new glasses. They’re super pretty, though it’s so weird to see them on my face in the mirror as they’re very different from my old glasses. I’m remembering that I felt exactly this weird 2 summers ago when I first got those old glasses, too. Now I feel so fondly about those old glasses, in large part because of a photo of me and the kid that summer at a family wedding, one of the better pictures ever taken of the two of us. We both look so happy back there in August 2019, anticipating the changes we knew were coming and so totally, completely oblivious to the horrible thing coming that would change so much, has changed so much.
My new glasses are the 5th pair I’ve had since moving to glasses pretty much always, away from contacts, which I guess makes it about a decade of full time glasses. I first got glasses in 6th grade, the classic can’t see the chalkboard in school situation, though with a dad who’s extremely nearsighted it wasn’t exactly unexpected that I’d need them too. I was able to get away with wearing them only in school for about two years before I really started to need them on my face full time in junior high, which was about as awful as the 80s teen movies make it out to be. Why were glasses and braces so devastating to preteens in the old days? Now it’s just no big deal, which of course is the way it should always have been.
I started hardcore lobbying for contact lenses in 8th grade though it took another year or so for my parents to agree. And for years after that I was almost never in glasses, only first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I tried to be good about replacing my contacts when recommended, cleaning them (and extra cleaning them? with fizzy tablets and special fluids? wow I can barely remember), not wearing them for too long, and not sleeping in them. But it was high school, college, early grad school; I was out late, up late, young enough not to be too worried about my eyes, on a budget enough not to want to spend too much money on them. And glasses were so annoying to me: no peripheral vision, hard to wear sunglasses, they make your face sweaty, they fog up.
But about a decade ago my eyes started to get cranky about the constant contacts. They’d itch or be dry or uncomfortable after most of the day, and gradually I started wearing my glasses more and more often. Yes, still annoying in some ways, but much less annoying than painful eyes. I’ve also found some benefits to glasses in adulthood. I think they suit me — as an academic, it’s part of the persona, right? And they do a great job drawing attention away from circles under my eyes when I’m tired. I still haven’t quite come around to prescription sunglasses — feels like a pain in the butt to have to take them on and off as the sun comes and goes — but maybe I can get used to that, too?
This is my 3rd pair of progressives (because old) and I’m always suprised by the adjustments needed. I was absolutely certain (and stressed out) that the incessant zooming since the pandemic had totally wrecked my eyes, and then relieved when I finally went to the eye doctor in late summer that everything’s fine, my prescription needs a small change but not too much. But the change in frame style plus the slight change in strength means that I’m figuring out anew how to hold my head to see close, middle, and far distance. So many adjustments every time something changes. I hope I adjust soon, because once I do I will take my old frames in for new lenses, keeping that old pair around just in case I need them.
