Seeing and Being Seen

WonderBoy needs glasses. I figured it was just a matter of time. I got mine in second grade, and wore a series of awful-looking frames with ever-increasing thickness and power of lenses until I shed the specs for contacts in high school, and have worn them ever since. Now, entering my fourth decade, my eyes are getting a tiny bit better, the far-sightedness of age catching up with my extreme near-sightedness. Perhaps I'll live long enough to even out?

The Boy complained about his vision last year, and I took him in to be checked. He did well enough on the test, sort of squinting and tilting his head a little, that they said he didn't need glasses then. He worried ever since that he tried too hard on the exam. Over the last couple of months, though, we have noticed that he couldn't read signs or small print on the TV when the rest of us could, so I guessed a recheck was in order. Sure enough, he failed. SuperGirl and I were sitting along the wall about halfway between the chair and the computer with the letters on it. She giggled every time he missed one, and gasped out loud when he said he couldn't read a whole line that she could plainly see. How sweet it is to be the younger sibling who can finally do something better than the elder.

With prescription in hand, we wandered into the room with the frames, and looked around. Glasses have gotten cooler since I was a kid. They have twisty-bendable frames, with glow-in-the-dark features, and they are EXPENSIVE....We finally chose some, and I tried to understand the whole anti-glare coating, featherweight, scratch-resistant, super-warrantied package options. That was on Tuesday, and WonderBoy was tickled. He was sorely disappointed that we couldn't walk right out of the doctor's office with his new accessory. And he couldn't wait to get to school to tell his friends. By Wednesday afternoon, though, he was deflated. Neither of his two good friends seemed too interested, he said. They just said, "Great," then started talking about themselves. And the one boy on the bus that he knows who wears glasses, called him a freak when WonderBoy told him he was getting them. He started asking why he had to have them. And couldn't he just wear them SOMETIMES. He says he is partly excited and partly not, now. And I feel that conflict in my gut, for him. I remember being called "four-eyes" by a kid at church named James Bond (for real). I remember thinking I looked kind of nerdy, and I was. WonderBoy is already one of the smartest kids in his class, and the shortest, and he already comes home agonizing over feeling "different". Adding glasses, and in a few years braces, will add fuel to that fire that starts like a slow burn in your middle and some days burns too hot to tolerate.

I have tried to talk with him about how I felt different too. And about how everyone feels different, in different ways. And about how different is good. But none of that helps much in fourth grade. I am trying to talk up the wonders of technology with glasses, and how he will be amazed at how well he can see. Things he never knew he wasn't seeing, he will suddenly notice, like leaves on trees. I am reminded of the Godly Play story that says that Jesus' work was to come close to people. The story says that some of them were blind, and he helped them see things they couldn't see before. We all want to see. We want to see truly, clearly, rightly. But what helps us see also makes us different, whether it is glasses or Jesus. There are days we might wish we could fold Jesus up and put him back in his case, and leave him at home, because he makes us stand out, or feel like a freak. But without our corrective lenses, we miss out on so much. Learning to balance that tension between seeing clearly, and being seen by others as just-like-they-are.....that is tricky stuff.

The glasses will be ready the first of the week. I am excited for him, and a little bit sad, too. But mostly I want him to see.