Ocular Adjustment
For my sister's 1 month birthday, we bought balloons and a sign with a big number '1' next to a rocking horse. I wore a red cable knit sweater, a red skirt and the requisite headband, giving the illusion of taming my long, thick hair. My dad took pictures, including a head shot of me, sans pesky hair accoutrement, laying upside down on the floor. Six or seven years later, I had to dig out photos for a school project, and I vividly recall a friend asking if the picture had been taken the week before. To a self-conscious teenager, this cemented in my mind that I was flying through time without acquiring the markers of my age. Both a blessing and a curse, depending on the occasion, I thought at the time.
Unpacking a CD folio tonight that I hadn't seen in several moves, I uncovered some pictures. I scrolled through them in chronological order, watching the changes on the faces of longtime friends. I opened the folder of myself last, not sure if it meant saving the best or the worst for last. And suddenly, I felt my age as all those cliches I avoided like the plague in my writing now felt tangible. They chased me to the corner of my treasure trove of idioms and yelled 'Ha!' at the top of their smug lungs. They wanted to watch me look at myself and judge and feel and maybe finally put some heft behind my resolutions.
Escape is the refuge of the myopic, and I haven't worn my glasses in a long time. But perhaps I did think ahead in just this arena: I bought vision insurance for the year.
Unpacking a CD folio tonight that I hadn't seen in several moves, I uncovered some pictures. I scrolled through them in chronological order, watching the changes on the faces of longtime friends. I opened the folder of myself last, not sure if it meant saving the best or the worst for last. And suddenly, I felt my age as all those cliches I avoided like the plague in my writing now felt tangible. They chased me to the corner of my treasure trove of idioms and yelled 'Ha!' at the top of their smug lungs. They wanted to watch me look at myself and judge and feel and maybe finally put some heft behind my resolutions.
Escape is the refuge of the myopic, and I haven't worn my glasses in a long time. But perhaps I did think ahead in just this arena: I bought vision insurance for the year.