The Family O' Blevins

In February I went in for my yearly eye exam. I dread these almost as much as I do the dentist, but I try to be vigilant, lest my health suffer (and my driver's license be revoked because of poor vision). Thanks to my extraordinary genetics, my vision is worse than most 80 year olds. I have thus far blessedly been spared the pain of cataracts, macular degeneration, and the warrior that took my dad's right eye at 25, glaucoma. No, my plight with vision, at least at my tender age, is just horribly horrible vision. My prescription has fallen into the negative double digits for the past 7 or so years. Although I don't fully understand the scribbles on these doctor-signed papers, I see numbers like -22.75, -13, +500, and know it just means my eyesight has indeed wormed it's way to worse, reminding me that not everyone's sight levels when they mature. (Maybe that's saying something about my personality and not my eyes.) I don't mind breaking molds, but this isn't what I had in mind. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to complain; my eyes CAN be corrected, and there's materials to correct them. Thank goodness!

We waited until we got to Durham to fill the glasses prescription because it would take awhile for the lenses to be made, cut, and shipped back. So a couple weeks ago I went to our local optical joint down the road and talked with a very sweet southern lady. When I handed her the prescription, I shifted anxiously, hoping she wouldn't turn me away declaring the prescription impossible for them (like the last place). To my dismay, she said, "Well darling, I don't know if we can fill this." After making some calls, to my relief, she said they found someone to take care of it. Woohoo!

Whenever I pick out frames, my mind tends to wander from the gargantuan prescription and I pick something I think will look really classy, and I'll spend a lot of time looking through the cheap plastic lenses of the display frames and see how they look on my face, with my hair and skin tone, and how it frames my eyes. (I bet a lot of you didn't even realize I paid any attention to those kinds of things!) And so I did with these frames, looking for my southern friend's advice and approval on just the right ones.

I went to pick up my glasses today, and I had dreams of my cute frames, wearing them sometimes when I didn't want to wrestle with my contacts, or when I just thought they would be cute. Then reality reigned me in when they were brought out in their little beige plastic tray and I had to smile at myself. I did feel bad for the poor adorable frames,reduced to pure practicality by the distorted shapes they helped reflect and humiliated by the opaque edges yawning half an inch beyond the delicate black arches that joined it's slender arms to the frame.

For what it's worth, frames, thank you for housing my ice-cube-thick lenses! I know you had better hopes and dreams for yourself, but I anticipate that you will be loved with me as you would have with any mildly near-sided girl. I hope, dear frames, that you will find consolation in the fact that you hold some incredibly expensive lenses. But vision, my new companion, truly is priceless!



Do you think the frames mind too much?



Yes, the fuzzy grey you see through the left lens (on the right side) is, in fact, how thick it is.



I hope our kids have Ethan's vision, but either way, I'm convinced they'll look great in whatever they end up in!