I tried not to panic, but clearly that is not supposed to happen. I also immediately remembered that feeling when I was seven and the black type on the white page suddenly looked gray. That was when I got my first pair of glasses.
So today after camp we visited the eye doctor who thankfully had an opening this afternoon. My sweet little man paid close attention to what the doctor asked, but my heart sank as I watched him say the V was a Y, the E was a B. My eyes welled up with tears. I knew it wasn’t just that his eyes were tired from a long afternoon at the pool or that he was being silly with his daddy. He couldn’t see clearly.
Three weeks from today my son will go to kindergarten, and in his backpack he’ll not only have his letter introducing himself to his teacher and the fun lunchbox he has yet to choose, but he’ll also have reading glasses. He’ll look so smart in them, their rounded wire frames perfectly complimenting his naughty, sparkling blue eyes.
He says he looks awesome, and while I can’t disagree, my heart broke just a little today. The fact is that we all want life to be easy for our children, and every little bump in the road – especially the ones that we know will follow them for the rest of their lives – complicate that carefree life we’d love to hand our kids. I wish he didn’t have to deal with the same issues I dealt with: figuring out how to pop my catcher’s helmet off to catch a pop fly without breaking my glasses, not being able to see the people on the boat when I water-skied, learning how to wear contacts, waking up in the middle of the night to a crying baby and having to reach first for my glasses…
But unfortunately, sometimes there’s nothing that we can do to keep our kids from having to experience the same things we’ve gone through. I guess that in the end the best I can hope for is fun glasses, a caring eye doctor, and kids with great attitudes like the son I have who ended dinner tonight with, “Does this mean I can add glasses to my Mii?”