the way I see things

I stopped wearing contact lenses last year. This was a big decision. I suppose I was an early adopter; I got my first pair of hard lenses when I was 18, back in 1970. That's a while ago. (I got green ones, because I thought it'd be cool to have green eyes. Then I was embarrassed by people commenting on my eye-colour. I never fake any other colours. No make-up, no hair colour. Long ago I reverted to my own colour, which is called hazel, a term for indeterminate, and in my case, the hazel isn't the same in both eyes.)

Once I was up and running with contacts, which took perseverance, believe me, I set aside my coke-bottle glasses, and pretended to be among the able-sighted. That was a little difficult with those early hard lenses, because they would occasionally pop out, or sometimes slide off my iris, and float up the white of my eyeball. While this was more stomach-churning, at first, and apparently always to onlookers, it was easier to find the lens. But most of the time, I just presented my face to the world, uncluttered by glasses.

I like to swim, and one day discovered goggles, which meant I could now see when in the pool, too. I became a good swimmer after this. It's funny, but I don't think anyone (including myself) ever figured out that some of my physical and social ineptitude in the world, had to do with not seeing things very clearly. Social, as in "ignoring" people in the swimming pool, which was really a case of me not recognizing anyone who was farther away than about three feet. Physical, as in I remember absolute terror dealing with surf in California, and hey, it was because I couldn't judge the waves at all before they were on me. It's made me a bit 'chicken' not being able to see. It's a problem people can't see, that you can't see, causing more social problems.

Hard lenses became intolerable several years ago, because of my eyes being dryer, imagine (just another of the interesting side-effects of aging, to go along with strange spots and bumps on your skin). By now my brain was well used to seeing clearly, and switching back into glasses was hard. Among other things, peripheral vision isn't addressed by glasses. So I tried soft lenses. This was a good transition, as now I could walk through most dust storms without falling to my knees weeping.

But I couldn't see so well anymore, as soft lenses don't correct accurately. They're guesstimates, which is fine if you're one of those irritating people who can walk around for awhile without your glasses before you miss them, but for me, it meant that anytime I was driving somewhere unfamiliar, I had to make a lot of u-turns or similar contortions, because street signs were useless until I was under them.

Then the soft lenses started to bug me too (time marches on, eh?) and then, miracle of miracles, an optometrist actually produced a pair of glasses that I could see through. Unfortunately, switching between glasses and contacts is very disorienting; I swear it makes my brain hurt. It has something to do with the contact of those contacts—pressing the correction right against your eye mean's there's no distortion. That little bit of distance from your eye to your nose? It makes a difference.

I had considered laser surgery, but found I wasn't as eager anymore to be an early adopter of anything involving my eyes. And then as the contacts bugged me more, and I began to think, well maybe, surgery, I was told I was a bit too old. Too old! Unless I had the kind of surgery that's done for cataracts, where they implant a lens. But that's for Old People, I thought. I'm not ready for that!

I occasionally had nightmares about not being able to see, recurring ones, all anxiety dreams involving my contacts. Either my eyes wouldn't open, or they were gummed up, or the contacts broke—which has happened—or the contacts were so large I couldn't get them back in my head. It's interesting I've never had a dream where I just thought oh, well, I'll just wear my glasses.

Which is what I finally decided, in my awake life. To wear glasses, exclusively. They're not as good as the old hard contacts—still no peripheral vision—but I make far fewer u-turns now, which is so much less stressful, and I don't seem to have those recurring dreams anymore, either. There is also much less of the coke-bottle about glasses nowadays (which helps the vanity I find I still have) if you can suck up the cost of the high-tech lenses (which I did, because seeing well is so critical). My lenses came from Germany, if you can imagine.

I've tossed the contacts completely; they're so last year. I figured my brain needed to readjust itself to glasses, and just forget those years of simulated okayness, which is taking awhile, but I'm starting to not always notice the glasses sitting on my face. Except when I look in the mirror, I'm always slightly startled then. Who is that?

It turns out though, that glasses cause little stress. I find I haven't had to work out their issues in my dreams. It's been a real treat, after forty years of sticking a piece of plastic in each eye each morning, and then having to go through the production of getting them back out each evening, that I can even have naps now, without worrying about my eyes drying out and the plastic getting gummy against my cornea (it happens).  There is a real simplicity about the technology that I didn't appreciate when I was 18. Back then, I just thought glasses were ugly. That's a benefit of aging, I suppose, getting over that. Mind you when I first got glasses (I think I was 8) I only remember utter wonder, at being able to see leaves on the trees, and texture to the concrete sidewalk I was walking on.

But the other day I went swimming at a local pool, the new one, built for the Olympics (I know, they were Winter Olympics, but still somehow a new pool got built. We got a subway too, which is cool.). And I was back to the old problem. I know I could tie these (extraordinarily expensive) glasses to my head, but that's really uncomfortable. Or I could do what I used to do, which is set my towel and glasses down on a bench, and swim without them.

I realized that I am in fact quite disabled. The thin veneer of plastic I had on my eyes all these years obscured that fact. I was careful getting to the edge of the pool, and then hopped in. I've forgotten the feel of water against my eyes, though I used to always open my eyes underwater. But that's 40 years ago! Ah, you don't forget how, and the chlorine in the pool still does not feel great.

But what's the greatest challenge is the business of discerning the end of the pool before you bash your head on it. And dodging fast-moving swimmers. It wasn't that relaxing, I have to tell you. But I still got in a half-kilometre. I like to swim longer, but it's the first swim in months, and the first one blind, in decades, so I won't beat myself up about it. And I will go again, on a less crowded day, and take my time, as behooves someone getting on in years.

Then I stumbled out to my towel, and put back on those precious marvels of human ingenuity, eyeglasses, and I thought about how nice it was that I have the beginnings of a cataract in one eye.