Clarity
I just got new glasses. Regular glasses and sunglasses. It has been awhile since I got glasses--I tend not to get them until I'm having trouble.
When I was a kid, I got very nearsighted before anybody figured out I needed glasses. (Not as nearsighted as my sister. When they finally hauled her to the optometrist, he said, 'Read the third line on the chart please?' and she said, 'What chart?') I remember walking out of the optometrist's office and suddenly, all the trees ended instead of fuzzing off into the sky like smoke.
After my exam, the women at the optometrist's office asked me what kind of glasses I wanted, and I said I'm turning fifty in February and I hate it. I want glasses that don't say '50.'
The trees are sharply defined again. I can read highway signs at night. My new glasses are very cool. Jen from my writer's group suggested that they would be cooler if they shot lasers and that is undeniably true. But apparently our insurance doesn't give us $50 off frames that shoot lasers. Probably just as well.
(Special thanks to Karen Shah who first told me about Bella Vision, the cool place where I got my glasses.)
posted by Maureen McHugh at 4:18 PM
4 Comments:
Oo, I like the pretty colors.
I remember when I first wore glasses. I was eight and amazed that other people had always been able to see leaves on the trees. My eyesight still declines regularly so I love the feel of new glasses but only wish it would last for longer.
Elise's memory is much like my own -- I'll always remember looking out the window in my second grade class and seeing the leaves on some bushes and feeling a sense of wonder.
Since hitting my mid-forties I've had another precipitous decline in my quality of vision. I need four pairs of glasses now (far vision, reading glasses, computer glasses, and bifocals for classroom situations). Nothing is ever really clear.
But I've had fun with the computer glasses. By making a very specific distance in-focus they enhance the sense of depth in my visual field. I've started using a lot more blurred effects in my visual art and the results are gratifying.
I think this might be what happened to Monet.
I'm reading this with my "cool" glasses balanced on my nose, the glue and tape having given out. Must last until vision insurance kicks in Jan. 1.
Oh, and I miss you. Terribly.
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