Every time I had passed the open door on our second floor where out bedrooms were, I closed the door to the child’s bedroom. We had decorated it together about 10 years ago, but there had been no occupant yet and I just couldn’t stand to see the door to the empty room wide open. We were on our way out to the car and for a while after leaving home my wife had not said much to me. I knew that she was thinking about a lot of things, and while I had tried to initiate some conversation, she had pretty much let every topic I had brought up die a quick death. I knew better than to bring up the big issue, but it was like a ghost was in the back seat, sitting in the empty school age child’s car seat that was strapped in there. We had tried and tried since we were married to have children, but we had not been fortunate enough to have Kate get pregnant. We had both undergone testing, but the doctors could not find a definitive problem. I had been the one who wanted to adopt while Kate was willing to give it a little more time. However, at the age of 40 her best before date had come and I was afraid it had also gone. The GPS advised me to exit the Interstate and turn right. I drove along the street for a while and then I was told to make a left at the next intersection. Then I was told we were approaching our destination on the right. I pulled up in front of a fairly modest, well-kept house, parked and walked around to Kate’s door, which I opened and helped her out of the car. We walked up to the front door and I rang the bell. A lady about ten or so years older than me opened the door. “You are here for Kaitlyn?” She asked. I said we were, and she invited us in. A little girl of about 9 years old stood in the background. She was about the right height for her age and tiny in stature. Her face was sort of round and she still had a bit of baby fat, which made her cheeks look a little plump. She wore red plastic framed glasses with oval lenses that were perfectly sized to her face. Her eyes were hidden behind the round circles of the very strong, double myodisc lenses. “Now I understand.” Kate said. The very shortsighted little girl moved closer, as if to see us better. “Are you my new mommy and daddy?” Kaitlyn asked. “We are if you want us to be.” I replied. “I like her. Her glasses are the same as mine.” Kaitlyn said, referring to Kate. It was true. Kate’s glasses had a different frame shape and color, but the double myodisc lenses in her frame were pretty darned close to the ones in Kaitlyn’s glasses. When Kate had said that now she understood, she meant that she understood my secrecy. I had not shown her a picture of Kaitlyn as I had wanted her to see the child, not the picture. I had, 20 years ago, chosen Kate to be my wife as much for her glasses as I had for her. I can’t see a lady wearing strong minus glasses without being attracted to her, and although I had spotted many high minus ladies over the past 20 years Kate was still the one and only one for me. But when I was scouring over the pictures from child adoption agencies Kaitlyn was the first one that jumped out and caught my attention. And from the minute I saw her picture Kaitlyn was the daughter I wanted to adopt. “Well Kaitlyn, I love the lady you would like to have as your mommy. And I would love you just as much as I love her if you want me to be your daddy.” I said. “Yes.” Kaitlyn was not one to waste words. All of Kaitlyn’s belongings were packed so I just had to put the suitcase in our trunk. It wasn’t a big suitcase, so I knew Kaitlyn didn’t have very many possessions. “Do you have any dolls or toys or stuffed animals to take?” I asked. “All the toys stay here Mister.” The foster mother said. “We will get you some new ones then Kaitlyn.” I said. Kaitlyn gave her foster mother a nice hug goodbye and soon we were heading for home. I think Kate had relented as she and Kaitlyn were talking as I drove home. “Can we stop at Toys R Us on the way home Greg?” Kate asked. “They went out of business Kate. Where else can we go? Would Target work?” I asked. Kate agreed we should stop at Target, so I picked the closest one to our home. Kaitlyn was amazed that we let her buy a nice teddy bear as a stuffy. Then she hesitantly asked if she could have a dolly. She was in awe of everything we were letting her buy and when we left the store, I was hoping she would realize that her life with us was going to be a long-term prospect. I had met Kate when she was 18 and fresh out of high school. I was a bit more than 2 years older than she was and I was in training as a helicopter pilot. Since I got my license to fly a chopper commercially I had been employed by the local television station and my job consisted mostly of 2 to 2 ½ hours every morning from 6:30 to 9 and every afternoon from 4 until around 6:30. I was the pilot for the eye in the sky for the traffic reports. Sometimes I was called in by the Highway Patrol to follow a car chase and give the officers a turn by turn description of where the bad guy was going, and I was paid overtime for that. My base salary for 5 hours a day, 5 days a week was rather lucrative as it was, so the overtime was just a big bonus. I actually put in more than 25 hours a week, as I also had to do the flying logs for the chopper, and I had to schedule the maintenance so my work week generally ran to about 35 hours, but I loved what I was doing so it really didn’t even seem like a job. When I first dated Kate, she was working at a childcare center. She loved working with the children, but she had to take the bus to work from her parent’s home where she lived. She had never tried to get her drivers license because everybody who knew her had told her that with her poor eyesight, she would never be able to pass the eye exam. After we had dated for a while, I was not so sure that this would actually be the case, but she didn’t even want to try to pass the eye exam at the DMV as she felt that she would be too embarrassed if she failed it. After we married and moved to our house the bus ride to the childcare center was a little much for Kate. I convinced her that we didn’t need the money, so she stayed home, and we tried to have children of our own. We tried so hard it almost destroyed our sex life – and our marriage. Finally, we both reached the conclusion that if it happened it would, and there was no sense throwing in the towel when we loved each other so much. My salary was more than enough to pay the bills and allow us to save for retirement. Kate could see that there was not really any economic advantage to her working, but she felt so useless just sitting around home that she started off doing a bit of dressmaking on the side. She also did some other sewing work as well, and she had built herself a bit of a nest egg, which she liked. But I know a lot of her time was spent thinking about our not having been able to have a child. I knew she loved me, and I often told her how much I loved her, but this was not fulfilling enough for Kate. She wanted a child. I know I did something I shouldn’t have done when I spotted the picture of Kaitlyn on the adoption website. I had registered a year earlier, without telling Kate as I didn’t want to get her hopes up. When I spotted Kaitlyn’s picture, I almost couldn’t place the call fast enough. From the pictures I had seen of Kate when she was a young girl, I was sure Kaitlyn was her doppelganger. Kate had sandy blond hair, and Kaitlyn’s had more of a chestnut brown, but the strong double myodiscs were almost identical, perched on noses that looked similar and the chubby little cheeks were almost the same. If Kate’s 9-year-old picture was superimposed on Kaitlyn’s picture I would bet there would barely be any differences. The adoption agency had all of our records, and I was able to schedule everything so that we could do an in-home trial as foster parents for up to 24 months. By doing it like this I was able to keep Kate in the dark, and up until we left to go to pick up Kaitlyn I had not told Kate anything more than that I had found a child that might work for us. And the minute Kate saw Kaitlyn she knew exactly why I had chosen Kaitlyn. I had never hidden my love of ladies that wore strong glasses from Kate. I told her when we started dating that she stood out in a crowd of non glasses wearers and I was more interested in her than any of the other girls. I also told her that her glasses were not the real reason that I fell in love with her, but they had certainly helped me make my decision when I chose her. And in the 20 years we had been married, I had done my best to avoid any discussions about her glasses. I never asked her if she could see something clearly. I always let her choose our seating distance in a show. If she mentioned that she wanted new glasses I always asked her if she wanted me to come along to help her choose a new frame. But I never initiated a glasses conversation and I always did a great job whenever she asked me to clean her lenses for her. I had hoped that she realized that her glasses and her poor eyesight were a nonissue with me. But of course, my choice of Kaitlyn brought all of this out into the open. It was wonderful having Kaitlyn with us over the next 6 months. The empty bedroom door was now never closed, and while Kaitlyn was very neat with her clothing and her toys, she often left the dolls and the stuffed animals sitting in a circle where they were having tea. By now she had quite a collection of toys and books. I had thought I would be able to read bedtime stories to her, but Kaitlyn was already quite a reader and she was able to read her own stories. She had started school in the fall, and they placed her in grade 4 which was age appropriate for her age of almost ten. Kaitlyn’s vision was about the same as Kate’s was with, or without glasses. Without glasses neither of them could even see the end of their nose, but with glasses they were somewhere between 20/40 and 20/50. We told the teacher that Kaitlyn was visually impaired, which was fairly obvious from the strong glasses she wore, and she was placed in the front row. Kaitlyn seemed to be doing very well in school and she was having a wonderful time living with us. She was happy that she had her own room and her own toys to play with. I was thrilled to come home to a wife and daughter that both wore strong glasses to see anything but a blur past the end of their noses. And Kate seemed to be happier with Kaitlyn around than she had been for a few years. But there was still an undercurrent of unhappiness in Kate. I spent hours wracking my brain to see if I could figure out what it was that caused this slight bit of discord. Kate had been a little upset that I had not involved her in the discussions about Kaitlyn right from the beginning. But that didn’t seem to be the issue. Her interaction with Kaitlyn was just as it should be. She took a firm hand when she needed it and she hugged and held Kaitlyn enough to tell that she really did love her. We had taken Kaitlyn to the same specialist that Kate had been seeing for years, and Kaitlyn had the same type of myopia that Kate had. Both of them had been born with longer eyeballs than normal and their myopia had been present at birth. Both Kaitlyn and Kate were corrected with their first glasses around the age of 6 months, and they both had similar prescriptions at birth. Because of the congenital myopia they had not experienced any additional increases in their myopia, which is a fairly normal thing with this type of myopia. If a congenital myope is fortunate they will not become even more myopic as they grow older, but if they do then it is possible that they will grow into the range of myopia that is so high that it is virtually uncorrectable even with very strong glasses. Kate had undergone all the testing for hereditary diseases such as Stickler’s syndrome and Marfan’s and the other soft tissue problems and we also had Kaitlyn checked. Neither of them had any signs of these problems. They were both just congenital myopes that were born with eyeballs that were longer than normal and they both required very powerful glasses in order to see anything more than a blur any further away than the end of their nose. Because of this it was pretty evident that Kaitlyn was a mini me of Kate, and anytime we were out in public a number of people commented on how Kaitlyn looked so much like her mother. And even though Kate was not really her mother we took the compliments and carried on. I couldn’t see how there could be any sort of problem with Kate and Kaitlyn. The only possible problem could be between Kate and myself, but it wasn’t that I had not involved Kate from the beginning. Her treatment and love for Kaitlyn proved that, I had been as attentive as I always was to Kate’s needs, and I often cleaned her glasses, which also lead to Kaitlyn wanting me to clean hers as well. I spent time with Kaitlyn, but I also tried to spend time with Kate as well. The problem was beyond my grasp. And then one day it came to me. Jealousy. Kate was jealous of the fact that I was giving Kaitlyn so much attention, even though I didn’t think I was. That is what it had to be. When we were married Kate was very insecure. Her poor eyesight had made her feel that she was inferior to the other girls at school and this had contributed heavily to her having an inferiority complex. I knew this when we were married, and I had spent a lot of time with Kate trying to help her break the chains of this and I thought I had. I had not noticed any signs of inferiority for a number of years and I always told her how her sewing and dressmaking was fabulous work. But the time I had been spending with Kaitlyn had taken away some of the time I spent with Kate and she was jealous. I had to get to the root of this little problem, so I had quite a long discussion with Kate. She denied that she was jealous of Kaitlyn, but after I discussed this further and more rationally, she did reach a point where she agreed that this could be a possibility. Kaitlyn was not legally our daughter yet because we were still within the 2-year trial period so I suggested to Kate that we could take Kaitlyn back to the foster care system. This upset Kate so much that she began to realize that while I was willing to do this for her, the little girl that she so loved would likely go back into the system and would likely never be adopted because of her poor eyesight. This was so unthinkable to Kate that she made a complete turnaround. I am sure that it helped a lot that I picked my life with her over a life with Kaitlyn, but I certainly didn’t tell her that I really had no intention of ever letting Kaitlyn go. Kate’s attitude towards me after that changed to a point where I felt that she no longer was threatened by Kaitlyn. And when the time came to adopt Kaitlyn legally, we did so. Now Kaitlyn was really our daughter and mother and daughter celebrated by both getting new glasses with identical frames and identical double myodisc lenses – with slightly different prescriptions of course. And as Kaitlyn grew a little older the looks of the 2 most important ladies in my life grew to be so similar that no one would ever think they were not genetically a mother and a daughter. Specs4ever August 2019
https://vision-and-spex.com/a-mother-and-a-daughter-t1888.html