“How old were you when you first got glasses, Mummy?” Emily asked as we made our way back towards the car. We had just been in to see the optician to pick up her first pair of glasses. At -1.00, they were not particularly strong, but as she was only five years-old, I knew full well that they were going to be the first pair of many. I thought carefully for a moment or two, trying to remember where I was when I got my first pair. “Six or seven. I was still at Primary School and I was in Miss Mandy’s class. We had a nurse come into school and do all sorts of tests on us and after the eye test I was taken to get my first glasses.” “Will I have to have two pairs, like you?” Emily persisted. “We may look at getting you some sunglasses when you have to…” “No, that’s not what I meant, Mummy. Like you’ve got glasses inside your glasses?” I must have looked a little puzzled at this point, as Emily added, “With the little circles.” At this point it dawned on me that, for the last few years, I had been wearing myodiscs as my prescription had edged up to -22 in both eyes. Emily probably didn’t remember the thick glasses I had been wearing when she was first born, but I had had to make the choice between what looked like “normal”, albeit extremely thick, glasses, and something which was much lighter on my face, even if they did have the effect of advertising the fact that my eyesight was worse than everyone else I knew. “I doubt it. You wouldn’t want to wear glasses like mine. I can’t really see very well, even when I am wearing them.” “But my new glasses mean I can see everything so clearly. I know I don’t have to wear them all the time, but I want to, so that I can see everything. Perhaps you just need new glasses?” “Maybe, but my glasses make everything so small that some things are difficult to see. Especially really small things.” “Why do your glasses make everything so small, Mummy? They make your eyes look tiny.” “It’s because they are very strong.” There’s no stopping a five-year-old, and I knew exactly what was coming even as I uttered the words. Nevertheless, I gave Emily the chance to ask the question which I had been asked so many times before. “Why are they very strong?” How to answer the question so that a five-year-old would understand, and try to head off the string of questions which would inevitably follow if I admitted to the truth? A truth which I had never told anyone. “Because they are,” I tried. “Can you see the birds in that tree over there? And can you see them without your glasses?” Emily looked where I was pointing, and lifted her glasses up and down a few times. “Yes, and no. I‘m definitely going to wear these all the time so I can see all the birds in the trees.” I wasn’t going to argue. She was going to be wearing glasses for the next seventy or eighty years, so wearing them all the time from day one was not going to change anything. I rather hoped that Emily was not going to have my eyesight. On the downside, genetics were not in her favour, but on the upside, I hoped she wouldn’t make the same mistakes I did. I had indeed been six or seven when I got my first glasses: a nice, blue NHS pair. I was told I had to wear them all the time. I guess they were probably a little stronger than the pair Emily was now wearing, but I didn’t want to take them off as they made such a difference to me, so it didn’t seem much like a hardship. Besides, I was the last person in my family to get glasses, so I just felt like I belonged. Sixth months later, I was taken back to the optician again. I didn’t think I needed new glasses, but when I was told I did, I was in no position to argue. When I got them, I did not really want to wear them as I felt they pulled at my eyes a bit, but my mother had been having none of it, and insisted that I wear them all the time. I couldn’t fool her, either, as I had chosen a pink pair instead of the blue ones, so it was easy to tell them apart. Once I got home, I was able to try both pairs while looking in the mirror – and also both of them together. This pulled at my eyes even more, and I wasn’t really sure that I liked the pink pair now that I had them. But I was stuck with them. In my room, I could still wear the blue ones, but I always had to be aware of what my mother was expecting, so I thought about what I could do to be allowed to wear the blue pair again. I couldn’t leave the pink pair somewhere as I needed them to see. I couldn’t say that someone at school had stolen them or that person would get in trouble and I would also be in trouble for lying. In the end, I decided the only way to get rid of them would be to break them, but as I had made such a fuss, my mother would be suspicious, so I had to bide my time. I left it a few months before I “fell asleep” while wearing them, causing the left arm to break. It was a carefully planned move. It was not uncommon for me to go to bed wearing the glasses while I was reading, and my mother often had to take them off me. It did not take much to “encourage” the arm to snap, and she duly found me with the broken glasses an hour or so later. What happened next was not what I had expected, and I was sent to school the next day with the dreaded piece of sticking plaster holding the glasses together. When we went to the optician’s to see if they could fix them (I prayed they wouldn’t be able to), they told me to wait around for what seemed like ages and then, instead of giving me a blue pair of glasses, as I had hoped, I found myself getting my eyes tested and ended up with my third glasses prescription in under a year. Apparently, my new glasses were to be two steps stronger than my pink ones. I wanted blue glasses again, but my mother insisted on the brown ones, and when I saw what they would look like, I had to admit that she was right. The process was repeated twice a year. Every time, there was a two or three step change which involved getting a new pair of glasses. I never really felt that I needed them until I was actually wearing them, but once I had them, I always knew why. It was the week after my twelfth birthday. My mother felt that I was old enough to take with her when she got her eyes tested and my turn followed hers. She was told that there had been a “slight change” in her prescription (I’ve since learned that this means “we want to sell you new glasses,”) and she went out to choose her frames while I had my eyes tested. I was not surprised to be told that I needed a two-step change, but was surprised when the optician told my mum that, at the present rate, my glasses would be stronger than hers in three or four years. In the event, it was just under two years, but this was probably my fault. Once I saw that her new glasses had flat fronts to the lenses, I loved the way the light flashed off them as she turned her head. I wanted my glasses to do the same. A number of my classmates were getting their first or second pair of glasses at about this time, so I no longer felt isolated, and no-one really commented when I did go for a change in frame-style. As people had commented that I looked like my mother’s younger sister, I started choosing frames which were as similar to her older frames as possible. After wearing my own new glasses for a couple of months, I swapped them with her old pair, and then wore them. They were too strong for me, but when I went to get my eyes tested just after turning thirteen, it was not a two or three-step change, but a four-step one. My mother’s old glasses were still too strong, but with a bit of effort (and a few paracetamol), I could see well enough. Come my fourteenth birthday (we seemed to have settled on getting my eyes tested on my birthday and six months later, as it was easy to remember), we both went to get our eyes tested. I knew what was coming, because I had to remember to swap the glasses over before going out, and everything I could see with the glasses I had been given six months earlier was a bit of a blur. I managed the top three lines on the eye chart, and a couple of letters on the fourth, but even I was surprised to be told that I now needed a five-step increase. The optician explained that this would have been a big increase in a year, but that to have it in six months was concerning He wanted me to come back again in just four months, and that he might then have to refer me to a specialist if things continued as they had. He then turned to my mother and explained that my new glasses were going to be stronger than hers; I was now at -10.50 in my right eye and -10.25 in my left, where she had -10 dioptres in both eyes. She queried how this had happened in two years when he had said it would take three or four, only to receive the answer that puberty affected more than just the physical look of the body. Sure enough, my new glasses had the flat fronts that I had wanted, but they were extremely thick, as there was little point in spending a lot of money in getting lenses made thinner if I was to get new glasses in four months time. I even swapped glasses with my mother when we got home. I could see pretty well with her glasses, and she said much the same of mine, though she could tell that the right lens was a little too strong for her. Fortunately for me, the threat of being sent to see a specialist never quite happened. As the optician I had seen for the last few years was on holiday, I saw a different lady, and although the prescription levelled out at -11 in both eyes, she felt that it was not necessary to refer me on. Now that I had passed my mother’s prescription, I had nothing to push the increases, and I had no real desire to do so. After eight months, we settled back to sight tests twice a year, and I was back to getting a “slight change” every time. I was actually quite pleased to be told that I didn’t really need new glasses for my seventeenth birthday present, as I would probably not notice the difference between -15 and -15.25. In the end, I decided to give contact lenses a try, and was quite pleased with how well I could see. It made a nice change to see what my face really looked like for the first time in years, but as they were expensive, when I headed off to university, I mostly stuck with the glasses and saved the contact lenses for special occasions. As is common for most students, my prescription started to climb: -17 at the end of the first year, -18 at the end of the second and -19.25 by the time I graduated. I used the money I was not spending on contact lenses to get the lenses thinned a bit, but at just under 15 millimetres thick, I was easily identified by my fellow students as “the girl with the really thick glasses.” Again, things started to settle after I had graduated, and, for the first time in my life, I was even told that there had be “no change” in my -20.50 prescription when I hit 24. I was happy. I had married James, a fellow student, a year after graduating. He wore glasses himself, but at -2, they were only a tenth the strength of mine. We had talked about starting a family, but in the end it happened a little sooner than either of us had been expecting, and Emily arrived when I was 25. I did get my eyes tested while I was pregnant, and told that a “slight change” had taken place, but I was advised to wait until after giving birth before getting new glasses, as these things sometimes rectified themselves. I had already had enough experience of rapid changes in prescription, so I decided to heed the advice. Although we would have liked to have a second child, the cost of childcare for Emily meant that we could not afford for me to become pregnant again, so I went back to work full time six months after she had been born. Although I would have liked to coast, putting Emily first, I realised that I needed to be earning substantially more money if we ever wanted a second child, and this meant working hard to earn some promotions. Almost inevitably, the late nights took their toll on my eyesight, but with the extra money coming in, I felt able to justify spending a little extra on my last pair of glasses, and for the last 12 months or so, I had been wearing myodisks. It wasn’t something I had ever really wanted, but as I quite like bold, striking frames, it was the only thing I could do to keep the lenses reasonably thin and ensure that they did not weigh a ton. It was not a particular surprise when we were told that Emily needed to start wearing glasses. We had been taking her to get her eyes tested since she was two years old, and the year before we were told that myopia appeared to be starting to manifest itself, and that, although it was not worth getting glasses for -0.25 in each eye, we should expect her to get glasses in 12 months’ time, if not sooner. As it was, we had left it until just before we went on holiday, so that the glasses would be ready for when Emily started at “big school” in early September. “Will I, Mummy? Will I?” “Will you what, Emily?” I had been lost in a reverie, and hadn’t really been listening to what Emily had been saying. “Will I have to wear two pairs of glasses like you?” “Who knows?” I answered. It wasn’t really a very satisfactory answer, but it was the truth. “You’ll just have to wait and see…”