The Bifocals Dilemma

One of the things about grief I often share with counseling clients is that if you had a good relationship, then typically, the further removed from the loss, the more likely you recall fond memories.

My mom died in 2017. And though I miss her, I have found, unlike the theory stated above, I recall some difficult memories. But I do so with a smile. One such memory came up recently, and it had my wife, Terrie, howling with laughter. It didn’t seem funny at the time, but the time was more than 50 years ago.

When I was in sixth grade, I had a history class in which I sat on the far right side of the class. There were windows on the left side of the room, allowing in the morning light. I had trouble seeing the blackboard.

My deskmate, Jay, wore the coolest glasses, silver aviator-style frames that were quite new to the times (early ‘70s). Wouldn’t you know, I tried on his glasses and Mr. Garrett’s blackboard scrawls suddenly were crystal clear.

I reported this to my mom, and next thing I knew, I was whisked off to her eye doctor. He was old school (a white male practitioner in his 50s or 60s, same as our dentist and our family doctor), and his verdict, after an hour of examinations, was that not only did I need glasses, but I should have bifocals.

Bifocals?

I protested this to my mom. No way I’m going to wear bifocals; that’s crazy. What kind of nerd wears bifocals? Nobody.

The one thing that made it even a little palatable was that I might get to have the cool wire frames that Jay had. Except for one thing: Mom wouldn’t allow me to wear wire frames. She ruled right there in the store. “Wire frames are dangerous. I don’t want you wearing them.” This is the part of the story where Terrie began to crack up.

Now, granted, wire frames were new at the time. But what she picked out, with me having no say, was an awful yellow-brown horn-rimmed frame that could have come straight out of “A Christmas Story.” And just like Ralphie, I was a physically small kid all through my school years. I was mortified.

I never wore the bifocals. Oh, I took them to school. They just never made it to my face. Fortunately, my mother was not the most vigilant about being in touch with teachers. I asked Mr. Garrett if he could pull down the shades in that morning class, and lo and behold, the blackboard came into focus.

At home, mom bugged me about wearing my glasses for maybe a month. And that was it.

The reason why this story cracked up Terrie, who only got to meet my mom twice, is that it fit into the body of work—the mom tales—told by all of us. My sisters and I, and all five of our kids, still love, six years after her death, to share “mom-isms.” The one about my bifocals had somehow slipped through the cracks for years.

My bifocals story was thus another “mom-ism.” Kind of like her tendency to blame living in the city (New York) for everything she didn’t want us to do: Have bicycles, drive, own pets, take the subway by ourselves. Her favorite expression was, “The city’s no place for _____.”

Somehow, we survived mom. And I survived without glasses until college, when I went to a friend’s father’s optometry practice, got tested and picked out my own frames—silver, wire, aviator.

To this day, I’ve never worn bifocals.