Eye appointments

Again, I should be doing other writing, but I just wanted to talk about the trip Miriam and I took to the optometrist this morning. Technically Andrew chauffeured us (it was raining/outside of my "bubble") because he's nice like that, but because of COVID protocols still in place (thank goodness), he just sat in the car while Miriam and I had our eyes checked.

I'm still pretty blind, which isn't really a surprise. But my prescription hasn't changed, which is good. I think it's been the same my entire adult life so far. Still, I needed new frames because Rachel broke my "favourite" glasses back in February 2020 so I've been skating through life in my back-up pair (which is fine, but it's always good to have a back-up pair for your back-up pair (or maybe a new "favourite" pair since I don't love my back-up pair)). 

My left eye—or “oculus sinister”—has been twitching for weeks now, if not months. It's been driving me crazy (and has certainly felt a little sinister), so I brought that up with the optometrist and he said that my eyes look perfect (or at least as imperfectly perfect as they can, given the fact that I can only read the top letter of those vision charts (Hello, E)). He asked me about tea, coffee, and other sources of caffeine, but I could very honestly tell him that I don't have any caffeine in my diet at all. 

"Stress?" he asked.

"Oh, some," I laughed. 

"I see in your medical notes that you're pregnant. First off, congratulations! What number is this for you? Second? Third?"

He knew it wasn't my first because, well, I had Miriam with me, but I think I kind of blew his mind when I told him, "Sixth."

"Okay," he said, giving a little whistle. "Listen, if I were expecting my sixth kid I think both my eyes would be twitching nonstop! It's annoying but it should go away."

He said some things about getting plenty of rest, trying to relax, and so forth. I'm sure it will stop twitching soon (I'm hoping that time will come once I finish this paper I'm working on because I know that project has really been stressing me out). I actually feel better knowing that my retinas aren't detaching/that my eyeballs aren't going to melt out of my head/anything weird like that and have felt like it's been twitching less today. 

Is that because I'm not worried about my eyes anymore (one less thing to worry about) or because I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel regarding this paper (two less things to worry about)? I don't know, but I'm not going to complain about a little less twitching in my life because my eyes were seriously driving me nuts. 

Miriam has been worried about her eyes as well because she can't see quite as well as her siblings can. When they play Minecraft, for example, she has to sit closer to the screen than Benjamin and Rachel do. I actually printed out an eye chart back in February and tested the kids' eyes myself (not officially, by any stretch, but, you know, unofficially) and she was the only one to struggle with reading the chart. 

She has mild myopia (she's nearsighted) and mild astigmatism (she has trouble focusing because her cornea is shaped funny), so she got to pick out some cute frames, too! But really her prescription is so mild (did I mention that her vision troubles are mild?) that I think she'll wear glasses about as well as my brother David did when we first got glasses. 

David and I got glasses at the same time—I was around 13 and he was around 15—and while my glasses were life-changing, his...weren't. I put my glasses on and immediately began making ridiculous observations about my surroundings: "You can see the lines in the sidewalk?! You can see the individual leaves on the trees?! You're supposed to be able to read street signs?!"

Glasses became my lifeline. Without them you can't read the chalkboard in the classroom and you trip over uneven sidewalk slabs and things like that. When I wake up in the morning, I find my glasses.

I need them. 

Meanwhile, David would do things like forget his glasses at home and not realize it until third period at school and just shrug it off for the rest of the day.

I'd be like, "How do you forget your glasses?!" 

And he'd be like, "Well, it's not like they make that much of a difference."

And I'd be like, "Sure, only the difference between seeing nothing and seeing everything..."

Corrective lenses are a fabulous thing and I really don't know how I'd live without them. But I have a hunch that while Miriam's corrective lenses will improve her vision, she won't quite understand the attachment I have to my glasses.