Glasses or Stage?

I shared my childhood experience, knowing she would ignore me the same as I had shunned those who tried to warn me. Glasses and braces are uncomfortable and not things to wish for, yet both intrigued my daughter the same as they had me. This is apparently a lesson many of us want to learn first hand.

As a child, my plastic hairbands rested on the bridge of my nose more than they saw the top of my head, often complemented by foil gum wrappers across my teeth. She wore an old pair of sunglasses sans lenses and a paperclip. I let her go, crossed my fingers, and hoped she would outgrow the phase before she choked.

I was neither surprised nor worried when the note came from school announcing she had failed her first eye exam. Prepared to beat the manipulator at her own game, I broke the sad news. I could afford a trip to the eye doctor, or the new game she wanted, not both. I hated having to make that choice. She saved me the anguish. Her eyes were so bad she needed the doctor that day and didn't mind giving up the game. She made the decision without regret.

Another child would have shown less enthusiasm preparing for a trip to an amusement park. She bounced out of bed, dressed without a fuss, rushed me, and chattered nonstop as we drove to the doctor's office and waited her turn. When the exciting moment finally arrived, a clinician asked her to cover one eye and look at the chart of letters on the wall. Although my daughter had been reading the newspaper and road signs since before kindergarten, she couldn't read a single letter on the chart that day.

I shook my head and smiled to ease the clinician's frightened expression. She switched the lettered chart for the pre-school version of giant letter E's headed in different directions. "Let's try this one," she said. "When I point to an E, you show me which way the lines are going by pointing your fingers in the same direction."

"I don't see any E's," my daughter announced. "I don't see anything."

The clinician turned to me. "I'll have to send the doctor in." I bit my cheeks and nodded.

The ophthalmologist entered the room wringing his hands. "I hear we have a problem." He looked over her chair and caught my eye. I covered my mouth and nodded.

"You can't see the letters on the wall?" He asked my near-sighted daughter.

"I can't see any of the letters," she said. "Or the number three on the end."

He cleared his throat. "Have you had any trouble with your eyes burning? Things looking blurry to you?"

She sighed. "My eyes always burn and everything is blurry. I told my mom a million times."

"Well, she has you here now." He winked at me. "We'll take care of you. How are things at school? Any trouble seeing the board?"

"I can't see the board. I can't even see my teacher sometimes."

The doctor closed his eyes and clamped a hand over his mouth.

"I think I need glasses," my daughter said.

"Possible." The doctor pulled the refractor down and positioned it on her face. "I need you to look through here and tell me if you can read the letters now." He flipped and switched lenses, questioning her after each change.

After what might have been the longest eye exam in history, she still could not see one letter on the wall. The doctor pulled the machine away from her eyes and pushed it back into place over her head.

"I think I could see the letters with glasses," my daughter said.

The doctor shook his head. "I'm afraid not. I just tried every pair of glasses we have on your eyes and none of them helped. I believe your eyes are just tired." He looked at me. "This girl just needs more sleep. I would suggest putting her to bed thirty minutes earlier at night."

I thanked him and expressed my relief. She left the examining room ahead of me and he offered another bit of advice. "She belongs on stage."