I Can See Clearly Now..

Karma comes around pretty quickly for some. 

It sure did for me. You see, last year my husband got his first pair of progressive lenses.

If you are not in the 40+ crowd, a progressive lens is like a bifocal but better. It provides multi lens support; distance, intermediate and near all in one pair of glasses. Even better - there are no lines to alert people you are getting old and you can’t see so good up close. 

Even though my husband is younger than me, only a year younger than me, so you can put the cougar jokes away, he made the downhill vision slide before me. He was a little beat up about it so I did the only thing a loving wife should do. I hit the ground running with old man jokes and started calling him Ben Franklin. 

All the ribbing was done with love, really. I find the best way through hard times is with laughter and I did make him smile. I was a little worried about him getting used to the glasses because they tell you to be aware of possible headaches or balance issues. The doctor said the change would be so slight, my husband would hardly notice. To this day, he claims the lab messed up his glasses because he never really noticed any change in his lenses and never had anything to adjust to. 

Personally, I think it’s male self preservation thing and he didn’t want to admit his glasses improved his vision. I don’t think he is ready to admit he needs them and that is ok. 

But me on the other hand, days after my 100th Ben Franklin joke, I noticed I was reading food labels a little bit closer. I was reading the medicine bottles a little bit closer. One of my favorite insomniac hobbies, reading newspaper articles on my phone in bed, was becoming a challenge. 

I went through weeks of thinking my glasses were dirty or my phone screen was dirty or damaged. It didn’t occur to me from the start that I needed the progressives as well. But the reading at night was really bothering me and I wanted to fix the problem. The more I thought about it, the more I realized what was happening. For a minute, I wished I had been a little bit nicer to my hubby but deep down I knew this middle-age right of passage was coming for me no matter what.

It took months before I could get an appointment. Because of the pandemic, all five of us were behind on both dental and eye check-ups. By the time it was my turn, I learned it had been four years since my last pair of glasses. (When making multiple appointments for people I sometimes forget to make one for myself.)  No wonder I couldn’t see very well.

But my doctor was very sympathetic and explained to me that while my up close vision was worse, my far away vision had gotten a little better and in fact my new prescription would not be as strong. 

This did make me feel better. You see, I’ve been wearing my glasses since the second grade and it seems like my vision has only gotten worse with each check up. But when you space out appointments over four years, it makes it easier to deal with the bad news. Obviously, that wasn’t why I wasn’t more regular with my appointments and I’ve gotten used to having very poor vision but hearing about some slight improvement - that was nice.

I had to pick out new frames which is hard for someone like me. When you can’t see to begin with and you have to put frames on with no lens power you cannot really see what you look like.

It is a frustrating experience and I have to hold up my regular glasses over the potential new frames to get a slight inkling of what I'm working with. I feel like I never have a great idea if something will work for me so I end up just picking something and hoping for the best. 

I went with a purple leopard print frame which seemed to be calling out to me probably because my eyes were diluted. It took two weeks for them to arrive and to be honest I was excited to get them. Four years with the same glasses is way too long and I needed a change. 

When I arrived at the doctor’s office to pick up my frames, I announced to the staff, “I’m here to pick up my old people glasses.”

I was met with words of encouragement. “Awe, no Kristen. Your new frames are sexy. You are gonna look great.” 

I haven’t collected any new phone numbers lately but I can read better in bed and that is as sexy as it gets.