The Family Curse

I was in second grade when I got glasses.

I vividly remember looking across the classroom at the bulletin board behind my teacher's desk, closing one eye and then the other, to compare which eye made the posters and cut-out letters more blurry. 

Not that I should have been too surprised. My dad was blind as a bat. Sometimes, I would put on his thick, orangey-brown-speckled framed glasses just for fun. Everything around me would become all distorted and shrunken in the middle - like a reflection in a fun house mirror.

At the time, I actually thought it was kind of cool that I'd have glasses just like my dad...and I pretty much did. I ended up with big, brownish, round frames.  That was the IN style at the time - totally 80's. (What were they thinking?)

By the time 2nd grade rolled around for three of my younger siblings, they all needed glasses too. My brother (next oldest in the birth order line-up) was the only exception. He had two years on the rest of us and made it all the way to fourth. Funny thing is that neither my mom nor my step-mom wear glasses so you would think that maybe Dad's vision-altering gene would have skipped one of the five of us kids, but no such luck.

When Abby told me last week that she couldn't see the board very well at school, my heart sunk a little. Not that glasses are so terribly awful, but you have to admit, it's nice not to have to wear them. I swear, it was like a whole new world when my mom finally let me get contacts when I was in tenth grade. (Yes, tenth grade. At least I had upgraded to gold wire frames by then, but still...)

The kids and I had just watched a rerun of "Good Luck Charlie" where the family goes to Hawaii and gets cursed when their mom "does the robot on sacred ground" so I started joking around that THIS was our "family curse".

Still, Abby kept on me to make that appointment. I admit, I was procrastinating a little, but I finally set one up for Wednesday.  Abby was kind of nervous/excited the night before the eye exam. As we were talking about it right before our family bedtime prayer, I realized that if, in fact, she did need glasses, I'd better put a more positive spin on this thing...

"You know, if you do get glasses, Abby, it will actually be like a family TRADITION!" (Good save, right?) That perked her up a bit, and that I assured her that kids' frames are really "in fashion" now (as she likes to say).

And, indeed, they are...

Yes, the family curse...er, tradition continues. Yes, my eyes started to sting, blinking back a few tears as she missed some letters on the eye chart, but seeing how excited she was to pick out those little aqua blue frames (her favorite color) with a heart on each side sure made me smile.

Cute, cute girl.

If only there had been frames like that when I was a kid.