#Middlebury
By BRIDGET HENRY
I am somewhere in the middle of my 40s and somewhere in the middle of coming to terms with my rapidly declining eyesight. At first I noticed I was having a hard time reading texts. I was squinting my eyes and pulling the phone away at just the right angle so I could read the screen. Then I noticed I was having similar issues with my computer at work, and with the book I was reading, and with the directions on the back of packages. (Seriously, why print “Preheat oven to 350 degrees” so no one can actually read it?)
Clearly it was time to take a little corrective action. So, I adjusted the font size on my phone, used the zoom feature on my computer and endured a lot of ribbing from my younger husband with his very judgmental 20/20 vision. Eventually, I swallowed my aging pride and went to an eye doctor, who confirmed I was, in fact, getting old. I bought myself a pair of those over-the-counter glasses for reading and put off prescription lenses for another day when I was much, much older.
Shortly after my visit with the eye doctor, I randomly picked up my son’s eyeglasses from his desk and tried them on. (My oldest son has worn corrective lenses since he was in the second grade.) Have you ever done that? Have you ever looked through someone else’s eyeglasses? It was awful.
With my son’s glasses on, I could not see a single thing. In fact, it was painful to keep the glasses on for more than a few seconds. While my son relied on this very pair of glasses to read, to drive and to basically see, this pair of glasses practically blinded me. I quickly threw the glasses back on his desk and thought to myself, “Well at least my eyesight isn’t that bad.”
And yet those glasses did get me to see something else entirely. My son and I most definitely have vision problems that keep us from seeing things as clearly as we should be able to see them. We do not have anything close to 20/20 vision. We both need some sort of corrective lens to improve our ability to see what is going on around us.
However, our individual blind spots are very, very different and the steps we have taken to correct these blinds spots are not at all the same. What helps my son to see, actually makes me blind. And what helps me see could never be enough for my son.
I feel like we all have some type of vision issue these days. (Even my young husband with 20/20 vision failed to see it was not a good idea to make fun of his old wife.) While some vision issues require glasses, some certainly do not.
Some issues just need a stronger light. Other times it just takes a good set of windshield wipers to clear things up. Most times, though, it takes a whole lot of learning. And, ironically, it always takes an excellent set of ears to improve one’s eyes.
Here’s to learning about blind spots and taking corrective action. As always, I am happy to be Somewhere in the Middle (of trying to see and hear things more clearly) with all of you.
