Part 1
As the optician frowned, changing the lenses in the plastic frame over my daughter’s eyes, that I knew we would be going home with glasses. I didn’t mind - Ally was a bright little girl and her teacher thought that her recent difficulties at school could perhaps be explained by what Ally referred to as her “fuzzy eyes”. At first I had felt guilty, aware of the fact that for the last year my time had been entirely swallowed up by her little brother Tom, a colicky baby who had kept us all on our toes from the moment he was born, screaming long into the night and waking us up early in the morning. Following her teacher’s remarks, I had watched Ally closely, noting that she did perhaps sit a little too close to the television and would scrunch up her eyes when looking across the room. A few days later, I had called our nearest opticians to make an appointment, and here we were now.
“I’m afraid that Alice is quite short-sighted.” The optician had changed eyes now, covering the left with an opaque circle and starting the same process as before with the right eye. “Nothing too worrying, but she will need to wear glasses.” As he continued, asking Ally to identify the different drawings on the chart, I once again felt guilty. How had I not noticed before that she was having trouble seeing?
Soon the optician was done, handing me a bit of paper and directing us to the rows of frames on the wall. Ally skipped along, seemingly unbothered by the turn of events. “She’ll need to wear them all the time,” added the optician as Ally immediately selected a pink pair, “And you should bring her back in a year, or before if needed.” I smiled, taking the prescription and thanking him for his time. The prescription read L -2.50 R -2.25, and as the assistant measured up Ally’s glasses, she seemed suprised that they were her first pair.
“That’s quite strong for a five year old,” she said, sucking her teeth and adjusting the frames, “I imagine she’s been having trouble for a while”. Thank you, I thought. Just throw in a bit more guilt for me.
Ally took to her glasses like a duck to water - she would put them on first thing in the morning and remove them last thing at night. If anything, she was rather proud of them and the attention that they drew to her, her friends wanting to try them on as she resolutely refused to let them. She quickly improved at school, reading everything that she could get her hands on, her nose always in a book as her brother ran rings around us. She showed no real interest in the television, preferring to lie on her bed and read, or sit at the table and colour.
The summer holidays that year were long and sticky, everyone preferring to stay inside where the air conditioning would keep us cool. Tom toddled around, pulling cloths off tables and wreaking general havoc. As I followed him around, constantly trying to reduce the mess that he seemed to trail after him. As always, Ally looked after herself, tucked into a corner or sitting quietly as the noise went on around her. In September, a card arrived in the post reminding us to make another appointment with the optician, and I did so, not thinking too much about what he would find. It was only in the car on the way to the appointment that Ally mentioned that she would like some new glasses to make her see better again. Once again, my stomach sank with guilt as we climbed out of the car and entered the optician’s.