Bifocals

My youngest daughter is the only 6-year-old I know who wears bifocals. She has strabismus, which is the doctor's word for crossed eyes. She started wearing glasses at 4 months and has had a couple of operations along the way.

When you have a child with a difference, that difference becomes part of your love for her.

Her glasses make her eyes look bigger than they really are, giving her a “Hummel” kind of cuteness. If you stand close to her, there is a little magic zone where she isn’t sure which lens will best render your face. She will cock her head back to try the bottom lens, then drop her face down and try the top.

I’ve been known to find this zone and stay there until someone drags me away.

I’m the one who always cleaned her glasses, holding them up to the light, exhaling on them and wiping them with my shirttail. She now does this herself, imitating my every move. She is so serious when she moistens the lenses with her breath, “Hhaa-Hhaa”, and wipes them with her shirt.

“Dear Jesus, if you ever show me something sweeter than this child cleaning her little glasses, I might die.”

I wish she didn’t have a problem with her eyes, but her glasses and all the mannerisms that go with them are a precious part of her. It’s a paradox, no doubt about it.

Last Friday she gave the family some good news. “We’re having a school holiday for the King who said everyone should get the same.”

We didn’t know what she was talking about.

My oldest daughter finally figured it out. “She means Martin Luther King Day.”

“That’s right”, she said. “The King who said everyone should get the same.”

Oh.

How simply she looks at the world through her tiny lenses, tilting her head to find focus. I will not tell her that we don’t live in the King’s world, that everyone will not get the same. She will learn this for herself and in her own time.

One day she may find that little cross-eyed girls don’t “get the same”, and that will be her grief to bear.

She is like her father, is she not? Or am I like her? Cleaning my lenses with my own breath and cloth, tilting my head this way and that, wanting to find focus, hoping to see the good.

We are also alike in that we are very small people in this world. Very small people.

I feel the impulse behind the Hail Mary, spoken by those who do not feel able to pray for themselves.

Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners.

Pray for us sinners.

© Copyright 2005 Preacher. Last update: 7/17/2005; 8:21:02 PM. Links