my little girl

  

My little girl got her glasses tonight. She looks so pretty, but it still makes me a little sad. I think because it is an affliction she will have to live with her whole life--not the glasses, but the vision problem. An affliction that was passed down to me from my mother, and now from me to her. My heart feels that strange mixture of the mingling of positive and negative emotions. Moms sometimes get this way when we are both happy and sad, like when proud of who our child is but disappointed with their circumstance, excited for something new with glimmers of dread for the unknown that lies ahead...but always, always, great love and tender compassion for the feelings of a little heart which are so much more important than our own.

I am so, so thankful that she likes them. It is a bit of a miracle to me how just when the eye doctor says she needs glasses, she changes her mind about not wanting to wear them. Suddenly, she couldn't wait to have them. I have lucked out having kids who wanted braces, and now this. That part is really wonderful. The part that is hard to get over is how wearing glasses {all the time} as she will have to, changes her appearance and, possibly, her image--the way others see her or treat her. So, it is like saying good-bye to the little girl look we were used to, and from now on, the glasses are part of her {until she gets contacts when she is 9-11, or whenever she wants them}. She is still going to be the headstrong-sporty-outdoors-sweet-nurturing-farm girl, who loves fashion, nature, animals, babies, and is full of spunk, ideas, and attitude...my little girl.

Catherine doesn't have to wear glasses to play sports, which is nice. She sees 20/20 out of her left eye, but has astigmatism in her right eye causing blurred vision. Having one blurred eye can cause the muscles in that eye to weaken to the point that it cannot even be corrected with lenses if the child is overcompensating with the good eye and not using the bad. Correction with lenses can also help her tracking ability to improve as a beginning reader in first grade.

Catie is excited to take her case to school, I think because she has watched other kids put their glasses in a case a school. They taught her a quip to help her to take care of her glasses: "Glasses are to be either on your FACE or in the CASE." She picked out two little, pink cleaning clothes, a bottle of spray, all packaged in a little tote bag, and she couldn't have been happier walking out of that office. She also has some 'bling' to add to the sides of her glasses; tiny, little jewel stick-on's to bedazzle her frames. She said she could see better, but things in the background were blurry. I remember that feeling from when you first have to get used to glasses. A few hours later she said that went away. Later, she described how looking through her TWO lenses just felt like 'looking through ONE big glass window', which I took to mean she is enjoying having clarity with two eyes working the same now.