Prescription

OS: +12.75 OD: +12.75

            I was made mostly of yellows. My yellow hair pulled back into a ponytail that nearly reached the middle of my back. I wore a yellow T-shirt and yellow ankle socks just barely visible between where my blue jeans met my white light up tennis shoes.

I was three years old and my legs swung wildly from the large faux leather chair. Everything was a mish mash of grays and blacks. I could see the instruments floating above and around my head, like the tentacles of a sea monster reaching out from the sea.

            “Your daughter has a severe prescription for her age. It’s rare to see such a high prescription in a child. I’m also sure you’ve noticed at some point that she has amblyopia in her left eye.”

            I don’t know if my parents had noticed or not. In fact, it was odd seeing them together so soon again. My father’s s larger navy-blue form and my mother’s matted red one. They always told me not to sit so close to the TV, and maybe I was clumsier than most kids my age, but they often found me walking on my tiptoes and jumping off the slide instead of riding down it. They had more to worry about than if my left eye wandered to the side a little.

Colors bled into each other and sometimes formed shapes and lines I could follow; like the way the massive white shard of Mt. Rainer interrupted the green and gray-blue horizon. The world was an abstract painting, in which, I searched for meaning.

            “Normally, we would recommend corrective surgery, but because of her age we are going to refer you to a specialist in Redmond. She’ll be able to tell you what steps to take.”

            My parent’s formed shuffled.

            “We can get her glasses though to make it easier on her. It will correct her vision and help with the astigmatism.”

            The frame choices were slim in the already dismal children’s frame section. The optician—a woman made mostly of blues—helped me pick out my frames. It came down between two. The same wire frame, one with pink temples and one with blue. I chose the blue.

            A couple weeks later when we came back to pick them up, the lenses were literally as thick as Coke bottles—the old glass ones your grandfather would sometimes pick up from the one gas station that still sold them—maybe even thicker.

            I slid them over my ears and onto my nose. The weight on my nose unfamiliar, but when the fog cleared and my eyes focused, the watercolor coagulated. There was much more to life: the teardrop shaped leaves that litter the sidewalk and the jagged shapes they get ripped into by caterpillars and the bottom tread of rainboots, my mother’s laugh lines and the small crinkles at the tips of her eyes, and the small yellow shards that made up a sprouted dandelion.

            It’s not just the world that looks different though, so do I. My yellow hair, a mess of strands and my lips form a heart that’s been stretched.

OS: 12.75 OD: 12.50

            Amblyopia—colloquially known as a lazy eye—is a term for when vision is decreased in one eye due to the eye and the brain not working together properly. Often caused by strabismus, an astigmatism, a higher prescription in one eye, etc. If paired with strabismus, it can cause the eyes to cross.

            Amblyopia is not always correctable with just prescription lenses, often eye therapy or corrective surgery are needed to correct the problem, in addition to corrective lenses.

            Most cases amblyopia begin in childhood and are often correctable without surgery, but often require eye therapy which includes; wearing an eye patch, eye exercises, and homework to be completed between appointments.

OS: +11.75 OD: +11.50

            It was a summer day, the day of my last appointment with the eye therapist. My dad met my mom and exchanged me into her car. I was excited, because I loved going to Redmond every month to check my progress. If I was good, Dr. Preston would give me a coupon for a free cookie at the bakery next door. I could already taste the heavy nutty and chocolate flavors on my tongue.

            Now, I was one of the older kids. I was in first grade; all the other kids barely out of diapers. Babies crawled around on the floor, while their older siblings played with the brightly colored toys in the waiting room. They tried to make it as colorful as possible. I wasn’t sure if it was because the office was specifically for children, or because the office was specifically for children with vision disabilities. A fish tank divided the room in half with tropical fish in every color imaginable. Blue, yellow, pink, orange. All the children, regardless of age, crowded around the tank and watched the fish swim, standing on our tiptoes as the fish ducked a beneath a rock or sea anemone.

            I felt a rock in my stomach knowing it was the last time I would see the fish. I secretly whispered a goodbye to them, remembering the way their bright colors awed me at every appointment.

            “Hello Alisan,” Dr. Preston said.

            She was a friendly woman. She appeared slightly older than my mother, but not someone I would consider old. I don’t remember the specifics of her face, but I remember being envious of her reddish-brown hair she normally pulled into a bun. I’d always wanted red hair. It reminded me of the bark on the playground and the sky at sunrise; it was better than the hay colored hair my mom had been tired of dealing with and cut into a bob.

            “As long as everything has progressed how we want, this will be your last appointment with us.”

            I nodded. What she wasn’t telling me was that I was old enough for corrective surgery, and if they determined I hadn’t progressed enough, I would be having surgery over the summer.

            She shined a bright light in my eye, made me follow a ballpoint pen, and read out letters from in front of me. They tested me using colored blocks and other toy-like items.

            “Looks like she has progressed nicely,” Dr. Preston said. “It seems like the muscles in left eye have grown strong enough to be corrected. You may still notice some wandering with her glasses off, but it looks like she is ready to move on.”

            I didn’t get a cookie that day.

OS: +11.25 OD: +10.75

            My uncle’s best friend always insisted he drove a green car. But, to everyone else it looked like a faded purple, possibly from one day having been blue. My uncle and his buddies always liked to give him shit for driving a purple car.

            “But, why does he think it’s purple?” I asked my mom one day when we drove by his house.

            “He’s colorblind.”

            “What’s colorblind?”

            “He sees some colors differently. He will think some colors are different ones or won’t see some colors.”

            I sat in silence with just the music in the background of my thoughts. Color was my anchor to the world, it’s how I was able to make my way around my house with my glasses off in the middle of the night. It troubled me knowing the world was muted for some people. Some never know the vibrant colors of a rainbow just after it rained or the explosive reds and blues of fireworks on the Fourth of July.

            I realized other’s must have thought the same of me. Seeing a young child with such thick glasses, they would see me in the hallways of my school or in the aisles of the grocery store and wonder if I would ever be able to get contacts. If I would ever be able to be beautiful like all the other children.

            I wished that one day I could get contacts and look like the cartoon characters I’d seen with blonde hair and blue eyes that all the boys liked. I wondered if I could ever be that girl, or if I would be stuck with the same prescription for the rest of my life.

OS: +6 OD: +5.75

            Labeling theory in sociology says that if the broader society or authoritative figures place labels on you that you are more likely to live up to them. For example, children and youths viewed as delinquent are more likely to live up to those labels as they grow into adolescence and adulthood, as well as believe it themselves.

            Labeling theory isn’t always outright negative. For example, children with glasses are more likely to be perceived as intelligent by teachers and other students, therefore, they will probably perform well in school.

            I learned about labeling theory my freshman year of college in a sociology class. I looked back at my school years, thinking of the times I was forced to finish my math assignment in front of the whole class because I hadn’t finished it because it was too difficult. Or the times I cried while completing the homework for my AP classes after I got off work in high school.

            “Hey Alisan! You’re smart, right? Can you edit my paper for me?”

            “Alisan, can I copy your homework from last night?”

            “Of course, Alisan, got the highest score.”

            “Alisan, you’re smart right?”

            “I don’t know,” I answered, years late. “I don’t know.”

OS: +7 OD: +7

            “Your contacts came in,” my mom said, setting the countless white boxes on the kitchen counter. “Do you want me to teach you how to put them in?”

            I nodded and looked down at the little white boxes. My mom worked as optician teaching people and children how to wear contacts every day. There was still a small rumble in my stomach; partially from excitement, maybe I would finally be beautiful once I didn’t have to wear glasses anymore. But, another part of me was nervous about wearing little synthetic lenses on my eyeball. I already had a bad habit about falling asleep with my glasses on, if I fell asleep with the contacts in, it could mean a visit to the eye doctor where he would have to try to dig the contact out from behind my eye.

            My mom tried to assure me that it was impossible for contacts to get completely stuck. The worst that could happen is that it could roll back behind my eye, which would be difficult to remove, but not impossible. She’d seen it done.

            She unpacked one pair and had me hold the contact on the tip of my index finger. It was heavier than I expected, sliding right off and onto the towel she’d placed, anticipating this problem.

            “Because your prescription is so high, your contacts are going to be heavier,” my mom explained. It was the first-time contacts had ever been an option for me. My prescription and technology meeting in the middle.

            After a half hour, I nearly got the contact in my eye. I felt the smooth plastic beginning to form itself to my eyeball, but alas, my instinct kicked in and I blinked, plunging the contact lens to the floor.

OD: +5.25 OS: +5.25

            My glasses became an extension of my body. It feels natural to push up my glasses, almost as natural as twirling my hair when I’m tired or talking fast when I’m nervous.

            They no longer make me feel ugly or lesser, despite what every nineties and early two thousands rom-com wanted me to believe.

            I take pride in choosing my frames, knowing what shapes and colors flatter my face, but not unwilling to try those that don’t. My frames made me fearless and my lenses shielded me from the worst the world offers.