“I’m sorry,” I say to my husband Josh, as I squeeze his hand. He flashes me a sad smile. “I say that in empathy not because I think it’s my fault,” I add.
“Well, it’s your mother’s and your sister’s fault,” he responds, only half-joking.
“Just remember,” I say, as much for my own benefit as for his, "If he had different genes, he wouldn’t be our sweet Julian.”
We’re on the Third Avenue bus heading uptown after our visit to the ophthalmologist. Our fears have been confirmed by doctor examination: Our 2 ½ year old with cherubic face, saucer eyes and mile-long lashes has strabismus. Strabismus is a weakening of the eye muscles that results in an individual being farsighted and cross-eyed.
We pass my grandmother’s old apartment on Manhattan’s East Side, and I suddenly get a flash of déjà vu. I can distinctly remember being there when we found out from the baby pediatrician that my sister, then eighteen months old, had inherited the condition from my mother. The word still sends shivers up my mother’s spine. I fast forward in my mind to when my sister was 7 and had surgery to snip the muscles that cause the eyes to turn.
“Hey, Kath, now your eyes are red, white and blue!” I remember saying over and over again. I thought it was the funniest thing in the world, and I couldn’t understand why nobody else did. The surgery was not completely successful, and to this day, Kathy’s left eye turns when she’s not wearing contact lenses or glasses.
I wonder if Julian, too, will need surgery. Given everything that can be done with lasers to correct eye problems these days, it is surprising that the muscle snip is still one procedure that is performed the good old-fashioned way. My immediate concern, however, is the glasses. There are worse things, much worse, than putting your toddler in glasses. Besides, Julian can get contact lenses when he’s 11 or 12, although right now that seems a lifetime away. And by then, other kids will be wearing glasses or contact lenses anyway. It’s the little kid glasses that break my heart.
“Will he have to wear them all the time?” Josh asks suddenly.
“It’s not like he can just put them on to do the crossword puzzle,” I answer, more sharply than I intend. I’m annoyed that the diagnosis appears to be such a surprise to him. Maybe it’s because the condition came from my side, but as soon as Julian’s eyes began turning, I began checking out little kids in glasses.
“Do you want to help us pick them out?” I ask, more gently this time. Josh couldn’t have cared less about selecting the wedding china, but I sense this is different. “They really have cute things for kids these days,” I add. “My sister was traumatized for life by those horrid pink cat’s-eye glasses.”
“I know. That’s why I’m coming along,” Josh says solemnly. “We have to both agree. It’s like choosing a name.”
The visit to the optometrist to pick out the glasses is difficult. All week long Julian has been excited about getting glasses, but now he wants nothing to do with them. Maybe he’s picked up on our disappointment, although we’ve tried not to express it in front of him. The doctor has suggested we get the kind with ear wires so they’ll stay on, but they pinch, and Josh vetoes them after Julian tries them on and screams in pain. We manage to wrestle two other pairs onto his little face, and we arbitrarily choose between them: the smaller, less obtrusive ones. Tiny, elliptical tortoise shell frames. With optional ear wires if he can’t keep them on otherwise. Ready in a week.
I find myself trying to memorize Julian’s face without glasses, as if I’ll never see it again. Of course, he’ll take them off for baths and bed, but it’s not quite the same thing. When I glance over at him during the course of the day, when he snuggles against me for a kiss, they’ll be there. Cold metal against my cheek and his. I look at his lovely, long eyelashes. They will annoy him when they brush against the glass. What if it wears them down? And what on earth will induce him to keep the glasses on? How will they rest on his smooth little nose?
I buy Arthur’s Eyes for him, but it focuses on Arthur getting teased by his friends and trying to break and lose his glasses “by accident.” No reason to introduce the concept of peer ridicule before it happens, so I put the book away for now. Will it happen? I don’t know. My sister still thinks of herself as a person who wears glasses, a person who gets teased, even though she hasn’t worn hers in public for years. At such a young age, these things change you, mark you, define you. But it seems to me that there are so many more things for children to contend with these days so maybe, just maybe, glasses are old hat by now. Maybe we’re raising our children to be more tolerant than our parents did. Maybe society has had its collective consciousness raised on issues of diversity. Then again, children can still be cruel.
The glasses arrive. Getting Julian to keep them on is a challenge at first, and I wear my own glasses for a week in solidarity.
“All he needs is a three-piece suit and a briefcase,” I joke. “Do you think this will get him into a better preschool?” Even Josh laughs. We both agree that Julian actually looks extremely cute.
“My eyes are cwossing. I need my gyasses,” he lisps proudly.
Two months have passed. I’m so used to Julian’s glasses now that he almost looks naked without them. And it’s a relief not to squirm as his beautiful eyes turn in and lose focus. A friend sends us “croakies” in several colors for when he plays outside. I enroll him in a gym class for the winter; I don’t want him pegged as a nonphysical kid. The truth is, the glasses haven’t changed him one bit. He’s every bit as active and rambunctious as he was before he got glasses. And his glasses have become just another attribute of our little guy. Just one more thing about him to love.
At lunch with my agent, I can’t help bragging about Julian’s off-the-charts verbal and reading abilities, wicked sense of humor and ease with people. She nods, half listening, as she eats her Caesar salad.
“And he wears glasses,” I add, as an afterthought.
My agent’s face lights up. “Like the kid in Jerry Maguire?” I can see the wheels start to turn in her brain. “I’m thinking sitcom…”
Joanne Sydney Lessner lives and writes in New York City.