Earl Spring was probably one of the meanest, most miserable men I ever knew. And you ask how did I know him, and why was I associated with him? He didn’t seem like such a crotchety old man when I married his daughter April, but I should have known from the way he treated April that he was a stubborn, opinionated, nasty SOB.
Back through public and high school I was in the same grade as April and May Spring. Earl must have had a sense of humor at one time, because April and May were twins, but April was born at 11:56 on April 30th, and May was born at 12:02 on May 1st. He must have thought it was a real hoot to call the twins April and May. Then the following year on June 20th he and his wife Autumn had their third girl, who they named June. April, May and June were all born in the spring so I speculate that it was a big joke to him to have the Spring girls all born in the spring. And maybe he had even found it a little humorous when he married a girl named Autumn and her name became Autumn Spring.
April and May were really nice girls. They were fairly pretty, and had decent figures, but they were not standouts or anything. They were just normal everyday decent looking farmers daughters. April had a slight problem though. She seemed to be a little nearsighted, but Earl absolutely refused to accept that there was anything wrong with April’s eyesight. Everyone at school knew that April couldn’t see very well, and it was only with the help of her twin sister May that April was able to keep up her grades and graduate.
The teachers at our school tried their best to get Earl to have April’s eyes examined, but Earl, as I mentioned, was a stubborn old farmer, and nobody could tell him anything. He absolutely refused to get April a pair of glasses and he told her that all she needed was to do eye exercises so she could see better. He claimed that wearing glasses would ruin April’s eyes, but I couldn’t see how that could possibly be the case. Not wearing glasses made it very uncomfortable for April, as when we were dating she always had to ask me to sit much closer to the screen at the movie theater than I felt comfortable doing. But I liked April a lot, and I understood her problem with her dad so I went along with her request.
When April and May had been younger they used to play baseball, and they were both pretty good players. But then April’s eyesight started to go, and she could no longer see well enough to catch the ball, or even see it well enough to bat. April gave up playing baseball, even though she really liked the sport.
April, May and I graduated from high school. May wanted to go on to become a nurse, so she went to one of the major hospitals in the city to start her training, but April and I planned to get married. I was working for my dad at his hardware store, and dad had a house in town that he had rented out to people. His tenants had recently moved out, so dad rented April and I the house and we were married when we were 19.
One of the first things I had promised myself that I would do was to have April’s eyes examined and get the girl a pair of glasses. But I hadn’t realized how badly Earl Spring had conditioned his daughter against wearing glasses. April was not willing to have an eye exam, and I really couldn’t force her into getting one. For the first couple of years of our marriage April sat uncomfortably close to the television whenever we watched TV. When April was reading she was able to hold her reading material at a decent distance from her face, and she did read a lot. She didn’t ever seem to have any problem keeping the house clean and she never gave anyone the impression that she couldn’t see stuff, but I knew that much of the time she was just faking it.
When we were both 22 April got pregnant. We had planned this, so it was no great surprise when it happened. It was a little inconvenient for me, because April had not been willing to get glasses, and we both knew she wouldn’t pass the eye exam for her license. I had to take time off work to drive April to her doctor’s appointments, but dad was really good about letting me do this. I had discussed April’s refusal to have her eyes examined with my parents, and while they couldn’t understand her reasoning they told me that I shouldn’t press the issue and she would eventually come around. I didn’t bother telling them that I doubted that April would ever get glasses.
When our daughter Alicia was 2 April was pregnant again. This time we had a son, who we named Alexander, since both April and I really liked that name. Both our kids were healthy and active and were the joy of our lives. Even Earl was pleased to have his first grandchildren, because May and June hadn’t given them any yet.
I guess Alicia was about 6 when April’s Uncle Bob, his wife Rosemary and their 3 children returned to town. Bob had left the area years ago and had gone off to the city where he married Rosemary and worked as an insurance broker. Bob was about 5 years younger than Earl, who was likely around 50 and Bob had come back to purchase Joe Stone’s insurance business. When I met Uncle Bob I wondered if Earl’s dislike for people wearing glasses had come from his brother’s glasses, because Bob wore very thick and obviously strong glasses that made his eyes look very tiny behind the lenses. His wife Rosemary also wore glasses that were quite strong looking and all of the 3 kids also wore glasses. Bob and Rosemary had married when Bob was 30 and she was 22 and had children almost immediately so April’s cousin Sharon was around 15. Sharon wore glasses that had lenses that were completely flat on the front and looked to be very strong. Her sister Gail, who was 13, also wore a pretty strong looking pair of glasses. Their brother Robbie was about 10, and his glasses looked to be respectably weak compared to the rest of the family.
May was now a nurse and she worked in the city so we only saw her at Thanksgiving and Christmas. She had married a really decent chap and we had gone to the city for the ceremony. June had also married, but she lived about 6 miles away as her husband Fred had taken over the family farm after his father died from a sudden heart attack.
A couple more years slipped by in a flash. Alicia was now 8 and in grade 3 when I noticed that she seemed to be squinting a lot at things. I made up my mind that our daughter wasn’t going to struggle as her mother had done to see things in school so I told April that Alicia needed to have her eyes examined. We had a pretty good argument over this, but in the end I won, and I took Alicia to the city to have her eyes checked.
The result of Alicia’s eye exam was, as expected, that Alicia was nearsighted and needed glasses. Her prescription was only -1.75D for both eyes, which wasn’t really high, and the doctor told us that Alicia only needed to wear her glasses when she wanted to see things in the distance. This meant though that Alicia was wearing her glasses quite a bit.
At first we managed to hide the fact that Alicia was wearing glasses from her grandfather since there was no sense in getting into an argument with him. But after about 9 months of glasses wear Alicia broke her glasses. I felt that there was no sense in buying her a new pair of glasses without first making sure that her prescription hadn’t changed, so I took her in for a second eye exam. Her prescription had changed significantly, and now her new glasses were going to have to be -3.50D. I took Alicia to a one hour optical and got her new glasses before we headed back to town. I knew the stuff was going to hit the fan because the eye doctor had suggested that Alicia would be better off wearing her glasses full time now. But Alicia really seemed to need her glasses and I was prepared to stand up to Old Earl rather than see her go around half blind like her mom did.
Earl was quite upset when he saw Alicia wearing glasses and he told me I was ruining her eyes. I told him that I wasn’t going to see my daughter go around half blind like her mother had for many years. And Earl finally realized that if he wanted to have any further relationship with his grandchildren he better shut up. He reluctantly decided to say no more about Alicia’s glasses, but I knew they bothered him a lot.
Alex went along with Alicia for an eye exam when Alicia was 10, and he was 7. Alex had very good eyesight according to the doctor, but Alicia required stronger glasses. And over the next few years that was repeated almost yearly. By the time Alicia was 15 her glasses were somewhere around -9D and the lenses had flat fronts and looked pretty strong. Much to Earl’s credit he didn’t say a thing about her thick glasses, but he did mention to April and I that it looked like he had been right and her wearing glasses had ruined her eyes just like they did to his brother Bob.
During the next year Alicia pushed her mom and I to buy her contact lenses. Finally we gave in and got her contacts for her 16th birthday. Her new contacts were -8.50D and her new glasses were -10D. We had bought Alicia thinner lenses ever since her prescription was -6D, but this year we just got her the cheap lenses in her new glasses. I was a little surprised at how thick her new glasses were with the cheap lenses, and I knew that she probably wouldn’t wear them to school.
Actually, Alicia didn’t even wear her glasses around the house very often. She took to the wearing of contacts very well, and her mom and I had to admonish her quite often to take her contacts out and wear her glasses to give her eyes a break from her contacts. I wasn’t happy to see Alicia doing her homework at the kitchen table with her books as close to her eyes as she held them, but nothing I said seemed to make much difference and it was not a huge surprise to me when Alicia continued to require increases in her contacts and her glasses yearly. Fortunately Alex still had great eyes, because his sister by now had really bad eyes.
Since Bob Spring and his family had returned to town we saw them around town a lot, and April had used her cousin Gail as a babysitter for our kids. Gail would often drop by the house for a visit with April over the years. Gail was now around 23 and her glasses really looked strange. They were no longer as thick at the edges as they had been, but now there was a circle in the middle of the lens that she looked through and when I asked her what type of lenses they were she told me that they were myodiscs. Apparently her older sister Sharon, who had stayed in the city after university, had also gotten the same type of lenses because the 2 girls had such strong lenses in their glasses now that they could no longer make regular lenses in that power and they had to have these myodisc lenses. Even though Alicia had bad eyesight at least she didn’t need these myodisc type lenses.
Alicia graduated from university and came back to town. Dad had sold me the hardware business, and we had been expanding and renovating the store, so Alicia’s marketing degree would come in handy. Since we were in the center of a large farming community we sold a lot of farm related supplies, and we actually were a seed and feed dealer as well. Even though I hadn’t pressured my children into going into the business, both Alex and Alicia had expressed their desire to take over from me after I decided to retire.
Working around a dusty old hardware and feed store wasn’t the best thing for Alicia and her contact lenses. After she had her second bout with a scratched cornea caused by getting grit in her eye and having it get under her contact lens she decided that she had better wear glasses to work. I was a little shocked when I saw my daughter in glasses for the first time in a number of years. They were extremely strong and thick looking. So I asked her what her prescription was now, and was a bit surprised when she told me that her glasses were now -22.50D. But she seemed to see fairly well wearing them so I figured that such a strong prescription wasn’t a big problem. After all her mom’s cousins, Sharon and Gail had even stronger prescriptions.
By this time April and I were in our mid 40’s. I had to go to the eye doctor myself, because I could no longer see well enough to read with the drug store reading glasses I had been wearing for the past few years. This time I convinced April to finally go to an eye doctor with me. I needed glasses, and I needed to wear them full time. Apparently I required a bit of a distance prescription along with my reading script. But the big surprise was not that April was a little nearsighted - it was that her myopia was only -0.75D for each eye. I knew that this was a very mild prescription, and I also knew that over the years April hadn’t been able to see nearly as well as someone with only -0.75D should have been able to see.
I talked with the doctor about this. He explained to me that with a lot of people they might be nearsighted when they are younger but as they get older the eye shifts the other way and they become slightly farsighted. In my case I had great eyesight when I was younger, but now I couldn’t see a thing up close without glasses. If April hadn’t been nearsighted it was likely that she would have been a little farsighted by now, so the shift in her eyesight had brought her from being fairly nearsighted to only being slightly myopic.
As we drove home I began to think about how adamant Earl had been about not getting glasses for April. Maybe he had done the right thing after all. And the funny thing about Earl was that even in his late 70’s Earl didn’t wear glasses to read. Had Earl been nearsighted all along? Had Earl watched his brother Bob get glasses and have his glasses get thicker and thicker? What bothered me more though was the question of if I had helped ruin my daughter’s eyesight by getting her glasses. By now I almost believed that April might have been wearing very thick glasses much like her uncle Bob’s or her cousin Sharon or Gail’s if her father had gotten her glasses when she was back in public school.
This thought has bothered me ever since that day, and I can’t get my mind away from it. What should a parent really do when they find out their child needs glasses?
Specs4ever March 2013.