“Well, what do you think of my new look?” Scarlett looked up from her homework. “Since when did you start wearing glasses?” she asked. “Actually, since I was about five years old, but I stopped when I was about your age, as I didn’t feel I needed them anymore. However, if you mean these particular glasses, I picked them up about half an hour ago.” “Err, they look different. They’re not bad; it’s just that I’m not used to seeing you in glasses, Mum.” “Well, you’d better get used to it. I’m told I need to wear them all of the time. Actually, I’ve got two pairs: these black ones, and a purple pair in the same style, as the second pair was only £20. I’ll show you them in a moment or so, but I must go to the loo first.” When Karen returned, she was wearing her other pair of glasses. Scarlett had just put the oven on to warm up, as she always cooked dinner on Thursdays. Her mother usually worked slightly later on Thursdays in return for an earlier finish on Fridays, and since Scarlett had started at secondary school a few months earlier, she took her turn at cooking once a week. Nothing fancy, just something out of the freezer, but as it was just the two of them, it meant her mother could have a couple of nights off cooking every week, as they usually had a take-away on Fridays. Scarlett’s comment of “they’re quite nice, too,” was hardly the ringing endorsement Jane had hoped to receive, but, on reflection, it could have been worse. It took a few days for Karen to get used to seeing herself in glasses. She couldn’t decide whether she preferred to wear the black or the purple pair, so tended to alternate between the two of them. One thing was certain, though: it was good to be able to see everything clearly, and especially the computer screen at work. It was also good not to finish each day with a raging headache, which was what had caused her to get her eyes tested in the first place. She had half suggested to her daughter that they ought to get her eyes tested as well, but Scarlett had dismissed the idea on the basis that she wasn’t having any trouble in seeing at school, and although she got the occasional headache, they were certainly not the daily occurrences, as had been the case with her mother. When the Christmas holidays came around, Karen had little choice but to leave Scarlett at home while she went to work. As Scarlett often spent a couple of hours at home every evening now, she didn’t feel it necessary to pack her off to a childminder every day, and the money she saved from not having to pay for this service was also a great benefit. She had already managed to pay for a visit to Disneyland, Paris, for the February half term, although she had not yet said a word to Scarlett, as it was to be a surprise. Her parents, Scarlett’s grandparents, still popped in on a Wednesday afternoon, and as this gave them a chance to see each other, she had seen no reason to change this arrangement. She also encouraged Scarlett to go and spend time with friends, so she didn’t feel too lonely. The second day of the Christmas holidays was a Tuesday, and Scarlett had arranged to go and spend the afternoon with her friend, Jade, who lived about a quarter of a mile away. When she arrived, Scarlett was a little surprised to see that Jade was wearing glasses, as she had not had them on the last day of term, three days earlier. On reflection, she decided, it was not such a great surprise, as both of Jade’s parents, and her two older brothers, all wore glasses, so it was almost inevitable that Jade was going to join them at some point. Jade had explained that she had had her eyes tested, and they had found she was quite short-sighted. It hadn’t been much of a surprise to her, as she had already worked out that she couldn’t see as clearly as most other people could, and when she had been told that she and her brothers were going to the optician, she already knew what was going to happen. “What’s it like to wear glasses?” Scarlett asked. Jade was rather stumped by the question. “Well, they don’t hurt, and they help me to see better,” she offered. “You tell me.” She took them off, and gave them to Scarlett. “Try them.” Scarlett took the glasses from her friend, rather tentatively. She had worn sunglasses in the past, but only because she had wanted to, and not because she had had to. She examined them closely, before putting them on. Immediately, everything became a little harder to see. “They help me to see distances much more clearly,” Jade explained. Scarlett got up and went to have a look out of the window. She tried looking at the cars in the street through the lenses and without them. The number plates were easier to see without the glasses, although she could still read them through the lenses by forcing her eyes to focus through them. She also had a look at herself in the mirror. They didn’t look bad on her, but seeing herself through the lenses was a bit of a struggle. “They’re too strong for me,” Scarlett said, as she gave the glasses back to Jade. “Do you have to wear them all of the time?” “Sort of,” was Jade’s answer. “I don’t need to yet, but I’m going to have to in the future, so the optician said it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world if I started wearing them full time from day one. I’m still a bit self-conscious about them, but I hope if I wear them all the time during the holidays, I’ll forget I’ve even got them on when we go back to school.” After that, the conversation moved on to their plans for Christmas Day, and the time between then and New Year’s Day, and the topic of glasses didn’t come up again. Indeed, it wasn’t until her mother had gone back to work, on the Wednesday after Christmas, that Scarlett even gave the matter any further thought. True, her mother had had various comments in praise of her new glasses from family members over the Christmas period, but as they were all of the older generation, and remembered Karen’s glasses from when she was a child, they weren’t overly surprised to see her wearing them. Some of them even seemed to have forgotten the thirty years or so when she went without them. Scarlett got up and got dressed. She didn’t have any real plans for the day, but it was always a little awkward if she had to answer the door while she was still wearing her pyjamas at half eleven in the morning. She also knew that her grandparents would be coming around later on, and she wanted to look presentable to them. She couldn’t see her hairbrush anywhere, so she went in to borrow her mother’s brushes and combs. Ordinarily, this would have earned her a lecture about keeping her room tidy, but as her mother was at work, she knew she would be safe as long as she put the things straight back. Beside the brushes and combs were two dark blue glasses cases. Scarlett couldn’t resist the temptation to open them up and have a look inside. The first one was empty; it must have contained the glasses her mother was wearing that day. The second one contained the black pair. Scarlett was slightly disappointed, as purple was her favourite colour, but she took them out of their case to have a closer look anyway. As she had a mirror in front of her, she put them on, to see what they looked like. The frame was slightly too large for her face. It felt as if the fit was okay, but she could tell that from looking at herself in the mirror. It certainly wasn’t a bad look and, remembering what Jade had said about her glasses helping her to see clearly in the distance, Scarlett went into her own bedroom so that she could see what she could see in her back garden. Scarlett was mildly disappointed by what she could see, as there didn’t seem to be much difference between the with and the without. With the glasses, everything appeared slightly larger, but no more in focus than it had been. However, she didn’t feel the glasses pulling at her eyes, as she had with Jade’s glasses, so she reached the conclusion that Jade’s glasses were stronger than her mother’s. She was just thinking about what else she could try with the glasses on, when the phone rang. Hurriedly putting the glasses away, and feeling slightly guilty, for reasons she could not fathom, Scarlett answered the call. An automated message about getting the carpets cleaned for the new year… The spell was broken, and Scarlett got on with the rest of her day. She was pleased to see her grandparents when they arrived, as it broke up the monotony of being on her own for the day. They had even brought a few old photos of her mother around with them, so Scarlett got to see what her mother had looked like (with glasses and without) as a child. After dinner, they sat down with her mother to watch a film on the television, until it was time for Scarlett to go to bed. The following morning, Scarlett was woken by her mother saying goodbye as she set off for work. “Remember that I’m going to be late home this evening,” she said. “That way, I shall be off at lunchtime on Friday, and we can go to the cinema or something.” “Bye, Mum. See you this evening.” As she was now awake, Scarlett had little choice but to answer a call of nature. She decided to start her day by washing her hair, so went to borrow her mother’s brushes again to get the tangles out first. Just like the day before, the two glasses cases were sitting beside the brushes, but this time, her mother had worn the black pair, and left the purple ones in their case. She quite liked the look of them on her, and far preferred the colour, as well. She decided that, after her shower, she was going to be like Jade and her mum, and wear “her” glasses full time, if only for a day. Once she was out of the shower, Scarlett went back and collected the glasses. She wore them as she dried and straightened her hair. She took great delight in choosing the clothes she was going to wear for the day, making sure that they were as good a match for the glasses as possible. After that, she had her breakfast, and settled down to see what her friends had been up to on social media. She decided against posting any photos of herself on Instagram in her mum’s glasses, just in case, and eventually dragged herself away from her tablet to do some of the homework she knew she had to complete before going back to school on Monday: three pages of Maths questions, an English essay about the book they had been studying, and a spider diagram about the Wars of the Roses. By the time she had finished this work, it was time for lunch. She had completely forgotten she was wearing glasses, and it came as a bit of a surprise to her when she caught sight of her reflection in a mirror. Moving around the house, Scarlett could see pretty well, if not very well, with her mother’s glasses on. However, there was a bit of a downside, as she was starting to feel a little seasick, for no apparent reason. It was fine when she was concentrating on one thing or another, just not when she was walking about. It occurred to her that she could just take the glasses off, if they were the cause of her nausea, or she could simply sit down and watch some television, and hope that the feeling went away. It did, and before long, she found herself settling down to watch the last half hour of The Sound of Music. She must have become too comfortable as she missed the end of it, and woke up to the strains of Lara’s Theme from Doctor Zhivago. It wasn’t really her type of film, but as her family had talked about it over Christmas, she found herself watching to see what happened. She cried when Yury and Lara were separated, and again when Yury died at the end of the film. As the glasses now had her tears on them, she went back upstairs to clean them using the special cleaning cloth in the glasses case. She considered ending her experiment for the day, but realised that she felt fine, and so put them back on again. At half past eight, her mobile rang. It was her mother phoning to tell her to put the oven on. Scarlett knew that meant she would be home in half an hour or so, so she went upstairs to run herself a bath. Before getting in, she cleaned the glasses once more, and put them back where they belonged. She lay back in the bath, enjoying the bubbles, and trying to read her book. Perhaps it was just a trick of the light, but the words seemed a little harder to read than usual. She got out when she heard her mother getting home, dried herself off, put on her pyjamas, and went downstairs to spend some time with her mother. Friday morning came, and Scarlett decided to have a bit of a lie-in. Although she knew she could still do the same on Saturday and Sunday, it was never quite the same as a Friday, as she could always lie in at the weekend. Once she was fully awake, at ten o’clock, she was still not keen to get up, and decided to do what teenagers and those of a similar age, do best: multi-task on different screens. She turned the television on, and picked up her tablet, which had been charging in her room overnight. Then, for reasons even she could not explain, she went in search of her mum’s glasses. She discovered that she could see the television quite well with them on, and they also helped her to see the finer details on the screen of her tablet. When she finally got up just after midday, as if to make some sort of a point, she got dressed and put the glasses back in time for her mother’s return. Just before one, her mum returned home, and they went out shopping for the afternoon, before topping off the day with a visit to the cinema, and one of those restaurants where they only serve “desserts.” It was a few days before she wore her mother’s glasses again. The weekend was quite a busy one, and then she was back to school. One of the boys in her class had got glasses during the holidays; idly, Scarlett wondered what she might be able to see through them, but as she did not know him very well, she didn’t say a word to him. The catalyst to trying the glasses again was a piece of geography homework. Map-reading skills were not Scarlett’s favourite area of study, and counting isobars was not easy at the best of times. It was even harder on a colour map which had been photocopied in black and white and reduced to fit on a sheet of A4. With the glasses on, it became much easier to see the map, and Scarlett kept them on while she did her French work, too. After that, it almost became part of her routine. After school, she got home, changed out of her uniform and into her own clothes, borrowed whichever pair of glasses her mother wasn’t wearing that day, and used them while she did her homework. Once or twice, she was so engrossed in what she was doing, that she didn’t hear her mum returning home, and had to hide the glasses and put them back either when her mum was cooking dinner or when she was in the shower. By this point, Scarlett had realised that she probably needed to be wearing glasses herself. There were times at school when she wished she had them with her, especially when doing essay-writing, but somehow, she couldn’t find a way of telling her mum, without revealing what she had been doing. In February, the weather turned very cold, and one Saturday afternoon, it started to snow. It snowed the whole of the Sunday, and was still snowing on the Monday morning. Scarlett could have walked to school, but just after seven o’clock, they received the message that the school would be shut that day, and it didn’t take a genius to work out that it was also going to be closed on Tuesday. As the weather was so poor, and the road conditions atrocious, Scarlett’s mum decided to phone work, and took three days of annual leave which were owing to her. They stayed at home that day, but by the end of it, Scarlett was getting bored, so she phoned her friend Jade to see if she wanted to come round the next day. Although Karen had known Jade for four or five years, they hadn’t seen each other since the previous Summer, and Scarlett hadn’t thought to mention to either of them that the other one had started to wear glasses. It was Karen who commented on Jade’s glasses first. It was clear that she had forgotten that she, herself, had only been wearing hers for about six weeks. Just as Scarlett was beginning to feel left out, Jade said: “You should get your eyes tested, too, Scarlett. I didn’t know I needed them until I went to the optician’s, and now I can’t imagine how I managed without them. You’d look good in glasses. Here, show your mum what you look like in these.” Scarlett was still trying to make up her mind how to respond to Jade’s first comment, as Jade began to put her glasses on her. “What do you think, Mrs. Johnson?” “Well, they do look quite good on her,” Karen replied. It was strange to see Scarlett wearing glasses, but Jade had a point. Scarlett had never had her eyes tested, and, if she had inherited her mother’s eyesight, she may well need glasses. “But there’s nothing wrong with my eyesight.” Scarlett knew she was lying, but to make things a bit better, she added truthfully: “I can’t see properly through these at all. They’re too strong for me.” “I said the same when I tried my mum’s glasses on,” Jade countered, “but she has worn glasses since before I was born. It turned out I needed to wear them all the time anyway, just not quite as strong.” Scarlett cringed at what she thought might be coming next. Fortunately for her, it didn’t. She took Jade’s glasses off and gave them back to her. “Back in a moment, Jade. I need the loo, and then we can go outside and build a snowman. Do you want to build a snowman?” Scarlett dashed out of the room, and went and hid in the toilet for five minutes, in the hope that the topic of conversation would have changed by the time she got back. It had, but once the two girls came back inside, Karen greeted Scarlett with the news that she had managed to book her an optician’s appointment for two weeks’ time, during the half term holiday. Now that the appointment had been made, Scarlett wasn’t quite so sure about how she felt about the prospect of having to wear glasses. To her, they were things that other people wore. She tried not wearing her mother’s glasses, as she certainly didn’t want to make her eyes worse, but the increasingly frequent headaches often saw her using them to help her with her homework. Sometimes, they went straight back afterwards; sometimes, she kept them on, to get more of an idea of what it was like to wear glasses all of the time. As the couple of days before her appointment were the weekend, she didn’t wear them at all then (she never did when her mother was in the house), and just hoped that any need for them might wear off during that 48-hour period. The appointment confirmed exactly what Scarlett had suspected. Like her mother, she was long-sighted. Like her mother, she needed to have glasses to wear all the time. Like her mother, she needed to wear bi-focals, to help her see distances and close up. Wait! No-one had ever said anything about her mother wearing bi-focals. When Scarlett asked her mother about that fact, she said that it was because she was getting old. It was no great surprise to find out that her glasses were going to be pretty much the same strength as her mother’s, and actually a little bit stronger – and she would need to go back again in six months to get her prescription adjusted. Like her mother, Scarlett chose a pair of purple frames. It took a week for the glasses to be ready, and an extra couple of days until they could go and pick them up. Scarlett had already adjusted to the feel of glasses on her face; she had been wearing whichever pair her mother wasn’t, whenever she was alone in the house. It was more of a relief to get her own glasses – ones she was expected to wear. The line across the middle of the lens was a surprise to her. With all the talk about how similar her prescription was to her mother’s, Scarlett hadn’t taken particular note of this, and it did take her some getting used to. It was no surprise to her school friends when Scarlett arrived at school on the Monday, wearing glasses. She had listened to Jade explaining how embarrassing that could be, and had made sure that as many of them as possible knew she was going to be wearing glasses. Needless to say, she had to keep taking them off so that others could try them. The bi-focal line caused more debate than the glasses themselves. There were one or two comments about “old people’s glasses”. Scarlett just laughed them off. “I just think of them as two for the price of one,” she said.
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