My Imperfect Vision
He would tell me later that he knew immediately: That’s the girl for me. Slender. Auburn hair pulled back in a french knot. Charcoal grey pencil skirt. Big black cat eye glasses.
It was the glasses that gave me away.
I waited impatiently for my eyes to weaken enough to need glasses like my older brothers. I squinted when I didn’t need to. I refused to blink until my eyes blurred and I was suddenly unable to read street signs. I attributed every headache to muscle strain, reading the chalkboard with my failing eyesight. When I was nine years old, it finally paid off.
“Well, she would probably be fine for a while longer without them, but wearing these for school and watching tv could help,” the optometrist told my mother. The doctor walked us out of the dark exam room and into the optical shop, gestured to the pitiful collection of child’s frames, and left us to it.
I studied my options while my mother glanced at price tags. I was always more fashion conscious than the rest of my family, but sometimes my mom surprised me. We finally settled on a pair of plastic frames, streaks of pink and burgundy running through them. “They look so nice with your coloring,” she told me, brushing my ashy blonde hair back from my umber eyes.
When the new glasses had settled on my nose and I had stopped feeling the weight of them on my ears, it was Christmastime. Our parents struggled with money so our holidays were usually modest. To my surprise, under our artificial tree lit with multi-colored bulbs, I unwrapped my first Cabbage Patch Kid. With her brown yarn ponytail and olive skin, she looked nothing like me, but that didn’t matter: Lynette Giselle, her birth certificate read. She must be French. And framing her almond-shaped eyes were plastic purple frames.
“See, Beth? She has glasses just like you,” my mother said. I couldn’t wait to take her to school and show her to my friends. But when I did, the boys poked their fingers through her invisible lenses and called her four-eyes.
In middle school I traded plastic frames for metal ringed with tortoise-shell. “They bring out the gold flecks in your eyes,” my mom assured me. Seeking acceptance from the wealthy kids in my honors classes, these glasses were imperative to my updated wardrobe. Scouring thrift stores I found pleated slacks, braided leather belts, earth-toned button downs. When classmates asked where I purchased them, I lied. “I don’t remember,” or, “It was a gift,” were my go-to responses. My glasses completed the look.
Attending ballet classes with glasses was tolerable but when it came time for performances, they had to come off. Darkened auditorium, footlights trained on the stage. I kept the pink, fluttering blurs in my periphery, the choreography imprinted in my muscle memory. My glasses, once a symbol of belonging in my family, were now a liability.
By freshman year of high school I had traded in my preppy slacks and wingtips for baggy flannel shirts and Converse Chuck Taylors. My vision had deteriorated to the point where performing without glasses was getting dangerous. My parents relented and I got contact lenses. The first day I wore them to school my seventh grade crush was talking to his friends in the hallway between classes. He stopped mid-sentence when he saw me.
“Liz…you got contacts,” he said, turning toward me. A smile broke across his face.
“Yep,” I said, and walked right past him. His eyes followed me but I didn’t look back.
For years after that my glasses were relegated to the bathroom cupboards, slipped on after late night study sessions, tucked away again in the mornings before school. I blamed those first frames, resting against the bridge of my nose, for the bump no one else seemed to notice.
When I was twenty I admitted that I didn’t want to be a dancer anymore. I left the university and moved across the country to a city where no one knew me. It was time to start over.
I was down to my last pair of contact lenses and I realized that for the first time in a very long time, I could wear glasses any time I felt like it. In fact, I could wear them everyday if I wanted. In a brightly lit optical shop in a local mall I considered my options and glanced at price tags. I tried on frame after frame, back and forth, until I was certain. These are the ones for me.
In 2001 I was working for a wealth management firm. Cherry desks filled the twentieth floor offices and a glass-walled conference room looked out over the water. It was a mirage: a college dropout, I’d taken a placement through a temporary staffing firm and managed to turn a two week gig into a permanent job. I wore J. Crew suits and ordered breves from the espresso cart in the lobby of the highrise, but my blouses were from secondhand shops and I dyed my hair at home with henna. Like a middle schooler, I was still playing a part, hoping my colleagues wouldn’t ask too many questions.
A year into the job, Lukas came along and saw straight through me. That’s the girl for me.
One day I picked up some trade requests for him at the fax machine and dropped them off at his desk. He was usually stuck on the phone and I knew these were time sensitive.
“Liz, you got contacts,” he said, looking up from his computer.
“Yes.” I’d been asked to be the maid of honor at my cousin’s wedding. Not wanting my glasses to cast a glare in her photographs, I had an eye exam and ordered new contacts for the first time in over two years. I told myself that wearing them to work was necessary to get used to them again.
“You look nice,” he told me.
“Thanks,” I said politely.
“I like your glasses too,” he added.
“Thanks,” I said again. “So do I.”
Years later, I stood in a brightly lit optical shop with our son, reviewing the broad selection of children’s frames and resisting the urge to look at the price tags. I offered some suggestions which were immediately ignored. He gravitated toward dark greens, greys, and black. Subtle Nike swooshes and Oakley Os decorated the temples, but he preferred wearing no logos whatsoever. He slipped on some understated, dark, rectangular frames, the Nike swoosh nearly invisible.
“I guess I like these,” he said reluctantly.
“Let me see,” I asked, and he turned toward me. “Those look nice. They frame your face.”
He pushed his ashen hair away from his forehead as the optical assistant sat him down, had him look directly at her, and dotted the clear plastic lenses with a dry erase marker to measure his pupillary distance.
“He looks like you,” the technician said to me, as she noted the measurement on his prescription. Chunky tortoise shell frames circled my eyes, so similar to the ones she’d just been studying.
“Thank you,” I smiled as he pretended not to hear her.
As we left I told him, “You look even smarter in glasses.” Inside, I added, And you have my eyes.
