Off in the distance....

I went to the eye doctor today for my usual exam.... I forgot all about it last year, but my glasses weren't bothering me, so he confirmed what I thought-- my prescription hadn't changed. My eye doctor is exactly my age, and he had told me in my 40s that my prescription would change every year in my 40th decade, but my vision would "level off" in my 50s. And level off it has.

However... that level didn't stay put when it comes to my "distance vision." Oh goodie. The good doctor (who looks like a young version of Captain Kangaroo-- really dating myself now) asked me how I passed the vision test for my driver's license last year. Well, that was a challenge, come to think of it. The letters in that vision machine looked much smaller than they needed to be, and I remember telling the clerk that I could only read letters of that "tiny size" with my reading glasses. She was about the same age as me, so I guess she let me slide, probably thinking I would figure it out on my own that I would eventually need distance glasses as well as reading glasses.

When my husband and I are driving in the car, I've noticed that I can read street signs only if they're written out in bold print-- those skinny letters high up on a street-pole just don't do it for me. So when Captain Kangaroo suggested this morning that I "look into" (pardon his pun) distance glasses, I thought I may as well give it a try. The last thing I need when I go to re-new my driver's license again is for the clerk to tell me that I can't have my license until I get driving glasses for distance.

So that's what I got today-- two pairs of distance glasses, one regular pair and one pair of sunglasses. When I got out into the parking lot with those new sunglasses, I was amazed that I could read the street signs, store signs, parking lot signs--- lots of signs that I once looked at from afar and couldn't make out till I got up closer.

Reading glasses. Distance glasses. I remember when I didn't need glasses at all. I also remember walking up and down the stairs at my grandmother's house, looking for my Aunt Dolly's glasses. She had just one pair back then, and she was always leaving them in the last room she happened to be in, then when she got to another floor of the house and needed her glasses, she would ask me to go look for them. So off I would go on the "search," and when I came back with her glasses she would tell me "What would I do without you?"

When I was in high school, one of my uncles gave Aunt Dolly a pretty beaded chain which held her glasses around her neck. Aunt Dolly was amazed... her glasses were always with her, no matter where she was in the house, and she was happy that she didn't have to "bother" me to run around the house looking for them.

It was never a bother. It was an adventure. And it made me love that big old house all the more because as I went up the stairs and down the hallways, with every step I would say the same words that Aunt Dolly said: "I love this big old house... I love this big old house..."

I should call the good eye doctor and thank him for giving me that memory today.