11 December 1998: Contacts

Contacts. How I love them.

When I was in sixth grade, my mother took my sister and me through the Burger King drive-through and instead of eating our meal miserably in the parking lot (on the rare occasions I go through a drive-through now, I am saddened, and I refuse to eat in a parking lot), we went to Dock-n-Dine and ate looking over the Connecticut River estuary. I pointed out some ducks upriver. Neither my mother, in her glasses, nor my sister, without glasses, saw what I saw. I had pointed to the pilings of a decrepit dock whose tops emerged from the high tide at a duck's height. This decided my mother.

Not long afterward I had glasses. Glasses in '80s plastic frames and with bifocals so that, my beloved optometrist said, I wouldn't read strain my eyes by reading through powered lenses. Pink frames that my mother and the optometrist's wife-cum-secretary picked out. Bifocals that cut straight across each lens with a sharp line of demarcation. Glasses.

Now I could see, but I couldn't run. My mother instilled a fear in me of breaking my glasses, the glasses being more important than my eleven-year-old activity. I guess I had mostly stopped tearing around at a young child's pace, though, and I had never liked team sports.

Glasses. In seventh grade, brown frames that I choose, brown being my favorite color. This time, the bifocals were the regular size and in the regular place, although you could still slice your finger where one was set into the rest of the lens. In eighth grade, the same frames but new lenses, so that I was without glasses for a week. I asked Mr. Steady, my hateful math teacher, if I could sit in the front row because I didn't have my glasses. Was he supposed to rearrange his seating because I forgot my glasses, he asked? I was often timid, but I could be sarcastic too, especially when I remembered to think on my feet. "I didn't forget my glasses, Mr. Steady." I articulated the name carefully so he could tell that I was calling him something else in my head. "I'm getting new lenses in the old frames so it's not my fault." I hate being blamed for things not my fault. I got to sit in the front, which did necessitate moving a classmate; Mr. Steady was careful to emphasize that this was her doing, which was just another black mark for me among my peers.

High school. I needed visual correction more now but wore glasses only when I had to. I considered the glasses Yet Another Thing for my classmates to disparage me about. However, I didn't remove them for my tenth-grade class picture. I have a Mona Lisa smile to hide my braces but those glasses are right there on my nose. I finally did break them in eleventh grade, and since this was an odd year and my father's insurance only covered glasses every other year beyond the first year, RCS, my beloved math teacher (it wasn't math but the teachers involved I loathed), set the ear piece onto the rest of the frame with epoxy. So they didn't fold, they had a lump of green putty in the corner, and I was a step away from a masking-taped bridge over my nose. I wore them as little as possible. Instead I became an expert in gait and gesture. I could distinguish someone--whoever I wanted to, anyway, like my high school crush DCL--at fifty paces. In my town, someone's wardrobe didn't indicate their individuality as well as their gait. And I still observe people's gait, still gauge it as an indication of character. When I met the boy who would ask me on my first date (N.B. this was not a classmate who had known me all my life), I wasn't wearing glasses; when we went out, we saw a movie. I kept my glasses in a purse (and I carried a purse solely for my glasses) and wore them only during the projection. By this time, I knew where in the stacks every decade of Dewey numbers lived, and only had to get up close and personal to distinguish 741.435 from 741.345 (art books, though--they were all oversized and no one cared if slightly out of order).

Then in twelfth grade, I made my third big purchase, spending my library income instead of socking it into my savings (i.e. college) account. In tenth grade, a bike; in eleventh, my class ring; in twelfth, contact lenses. (To be honest, my father kicked in for the bike and the ring, because he did enjoy being able to give extravagant presents. But I would have spend the money.) Before I visited my first boyfriend (the second, depending on context, and decidedly not the date), my mother drove me to our optometrist's office and she sat across the room from me while the doctor coached me in how to insert the little buggers. Left, then right. I put in the left one and immediately closed the eye. I wanted the first effect to be the full effect. I put in the right one and closed that eye, to feel whether it was in. I raised my head and opened my eyes and smiled at my mother across the room, eight feet away, the first time in six years I had seen anything clearly without a stupid frame around my sight. I turned my head and peered at her from the corner of my eyes, the first time in six years I had had peripheral vision.

And was I smiling. I didn't care about my braces nearly as much as my glasses, which were now gone gone gone. The memory of that first clear sight still brings a smile to my face. I like to think I remember that the first thing I saw was BJW, hostile to the whole plan, yet with tears in her eyes despite herself, because of my happiness.

Two weeks later was a day of reckoning. Wednesday, 11 December 1985, everything changed. On New Year's Eve, 1984, I got my first flattering haircut; 19 November 1985 I got my first contact lenses; and it all came to a head on 11 December. Early in the morning, my mother drove me to my hateful incompetent orthodontist and he removed, months and months later than he had originally promised, almost all the wire from my mouth, leaving just a sturdy one glued behind my lower teeth to prevent my incoming wisdom teeth from jostling them. I ran my tongue over enamel instead of stainless steel--how callused my tongue must have been!--for the first time in 30 months. At noon, I was inducted into the National Honor Society. I was not in the first round from my school. My class standing had dropped with Algebra II (just because I loved my teacher doesn't mean I understood a damn thing) and to this day I think TPTB just wanted to be merciful, even if my SAT scores were respectable. After school, my mother drove me to the DMV, and there I got my driver's license. The smile in that license photo could light up a room.

I was myopic, but no one could tell. My teeth were straightened, I had one wire glued in where no one would see it and another to masticate only overnight. I was accepted into the ranks of the Not Stupids and could wear the golden ribbon over my graduation gown. My haircut showed my face to its best advantage (I love Frank). I was legal to drive, even if my parents never allowed us to drive their cars. I had arrived.

Today is the 13th anniversary of that day.

Seventeen months ago, I was stopped wearing contacts. I bought prescription sunglasses and either wore them inside (rude!) or switched pairs all the time (fussy!). I hated my own reflection. I vacillate between enjoying my inflated ego and decrying my undeserved ego, but part of whatever esteem I now hold myself in is how much more attractive I find myself than my classmates did. When I went to my ten-year high school reunion, a woman who had then despised my priggish preppy academic unpopularity said now she recognized my name but not my face. I had brought my yearbook (I was the only one to do so!) and showed her the picture, and her eyes went wide. She said, "That's you?!" And I just had to do this at some point: I slid my silver pin from my hair and retwisted my chignon, and a man exclaimed, "Lisa! Your hair!" in tones not at all disapproving. Damn, I throve on that. Anyway, when I was shunted back to glasses, I thought I should probably get braces again, just to complete my hated former self--I'm not always so fond of my hair being long, either. And just yesterday, for the first time in seventeenth months, I saw myself as pretty again.

In July of 1997 lenses bothered my eyes and I thought I had conjunctivitis, regular pink-eye. A coworker's son had it; I thought I could have caught it thus. I went to my HMO (that's KAISER if you're looking for one to avoid) and the practitioner said "Giant Papillary Conjunctivitis." The insides of my eyelids were inflamed to a three on a scale of four. No contacts until further notice. I cheated and wore them for my mother's wedding, damn it; I wasn't going to be a hag of honor in glasses. In October 1997, her final diagnosis was that my eyelids still rated a high 2 and to "minimize contact usage." What does "minimize" mean, I asked her? You can minimize eating and you can minimize your use of meth and the two "minimizes" mean totally different things. She's from Kaiser: she didn't say. She said to check back in a year.

A year?

In October of this year, therefore, I called Kaiser. I told the receptionist in the "Eye Care" Department that I wanted to see an ophthalmologist, the same one I saw last year if possible. "Dr. X isn't an ophthalmologist," the person said. "She's an optometrist."

WHAT?

I responded as Harold does when Maude tells him what she's planned for her 80th birthday. I felt like Harold when the doctor speaks to him, having coming slowly up the hall in tension-inducing clips interspersed with ones of his night-long vigil. I felt like a pig for equating my vanity with his grief.

WHAT?

I told the person, attempting to be calm, that I had seen Dr. X for a diagnosis of eye disease, not a measurement of visual acuity, and therefore this time I would fucking well see an ophthalmologist. They never told me about their stupid HMO screening policy and I, fucking stupid trusting fool that I am, didn't question it. Didn't question Kaiser.

Well. That afternoon and not a second later, I saw an ophthalmologist. I decided I liked her, but you know I wouldn't've if her conclusion hadn't been that my eyes were fine.

A year. For more than a year they--Kaiser--made me ugly. A year of thinking of my 16-year-old self every time I saw myself, every time I noticed the frame around my vision, every time I had to turn my head instead of my eyes. I realize my conjunctiva might still regress and become intolerant of lenses again. I am trying to grasp that possibility in my two hands and face it. Meanwhile, I take exquisite care of my lenses, I will buy two-week lenses when I run out of my old prescription of two-month lenses (which I am wearing two weeks at a time), and I will starve myself and anyone else I need to, to buy laser surgery. In the meantime, contacts.

Contacts. I wore them for my mother's wedding, during the blizzard of '97, in San Francisco this September, and a couple of other days in between, like when getting my hair cut so as not to suffer any fool blindly. I missed them sorely. Immediately after my initial and incompetent diagnosis (which I call "incompetent" because however competent at gauging myopia an optometrist might be, she is not a specialist in diseases of the eye), RDC and I went camping in Glacier National Park for a week. I put a rush on prescription sunglasses so I'd have them in time; I picked them up the day before we left. To get to Glacier, we drove northwest through Wyoming to have a glimpse of Yellowstone. Yellowstone, which is known for geysers. Which blow large amounts of mineral-laden water into the air.

If I had any doubts that glasses are a stupid way to correct vision and any philanthropist is welcome to correct everyone's vision by laser surgery by noon tomorrow thankyouverymuch, walking among the Paint Pots removed all doubts. I wanted to look at the geysers, not duck my head with their stupid glasses away from the spray. RDC told me I hadn't developed the body language for glasses yet. I hadn't. I was still moving my eyes--you know, that evolutionary advantage--instead of my imprisoned head to see something on one side. I was determined I wouldn't do develop any such body language. But I did.

Today I noticed, for a second time that I did something with glasses body language that I didn't have to do. Yesterday, getting into the car, I ducked my head to avoid striking my glasses on the frame of the door. Even though I had plenty of clearance, I have this persistent fear that my glasses will shatter and blind me. Today talking to a coworker, I was swinging on his doorframe, and when I rested my head against the sill, I again compensated for glasses that weren't there.

Oh the bliss.