I might keep a few extra
pairs of glasses around the house -
or around my face.
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- I'm a woman of a certain age.
- I can't read font smaller than 18-point sans-serif without my glasses, because even New Times Roman looks like संस्कृत without them. संस्कृत means Sanskrit, by the way.
- The bed wasn't creaking; it was me.
I didn't have children until I was in my forties. When I was forty-three and having an eye exam, the optometrist announced that it was time for my first pair of bifocals, to which I blurted, "I can't need bifocals! I have babies at home!" Because I'd easily gotten pregnant in my forties, I presumed that my amped up ovaries would send sustenance to my eyeballs via dual umbilical cords and preserve my vision. But for that to be true, my insides would have to resemble an Escher print, which I doubt they do.
On my fiftieth birthday, someone showed me a clip from an adult movie depicting women, age 50-plus, getting a lot of, shall we say, attention, from younger men. One woman never took her glasses off despite them slipping ever closer to the end of her nose. Now I understand that she didn't take them off because she needed them to see what was happening.
Forgetting where I've left my glasses is bound to happen again, and blaming my glasses, as though they're at fault by forgetting where they left my face, won't help. It's just another reminder that I am aging, which doesn't mean I can't still see myself in the best light possible, even if I need the best light possible to see myself.