The Mother Load

I began writing this column a couple of months ago. The emotions have dampened a little since then, but the sentiment remains. Weep with me, readers. Weep with me.

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I broke my glasses last week. The black ones in the picture. The awesome ones on my face. The nifty, clunky glasses I thought of as my feminist/college student/intellectual/cool chick glasses. They fell off my dresser and in my blindness, I stepped on them.

And they were gone.

I was unprepared for my response. I cried. I panicked. I questioned my place in the universe. I cried some more.

It's not that I didn't know how I would survive the following day without the sight all of us need to get around without running into walls or wearing stupid outfits or accidentally liking Adam Sandler movies on Facebook. I had a backup pair of glasses ready and waiting to handle the business of seeing for me.

The problem was that that backup pair was, like many of the glasses I've owned and hated, a product of trying on glasses without actually being able to see what they look like on your face. You stand in the store, squint into the mirror, hope they're passable, and then a week later, you put them on with actual corrective lenses in them and think, "GAH! Blind people should not be allowed to choose glasses!"  (To illustrate: this current backup pair are so non-cool that I used them as the icing on the cake of my "Pregnant Polygamist" costume last Halloween.)

Losing my cool glasses was one of those moments when everything changes and you stand where you are and think, "I'm not sure who I am anymore."  It's a shaky place to be.

If you've never been a regular glasses-wearer, you may not understand these feelings. People who have to wear glasses wear them because they have to wear them. We try to look good in them, but, hey...they're glasses. They're not exactly an enhancement.  They say something about the wearer, and that something is usually "Nerd!" or "Dweeb!" or "Too cheap for contacts or lasik!"

You can imagine how wonderful it was when I noticed a trend toward glasses as fashion or social statement in recent years. Cool people were suddenly wearing glasses as part of their coolness. People who didn't even NEED glasses started wearing fake ones to look cool. I, nerdy, too cheap for contacts Sarah, could get a pair of glasses that said something more about the woman behind them.  My beautiful, clunky black glasses were purchased and loved and worn with pride.

And then they died.

So, it's been a few months, and I no longer stare in horror when I look in the mirror or at a picture of myself. I don't hate my backup glasses quite as much as I did when the shock was fresh. I still miss my wonderful black pair, but as someone too cheap for contacts, you can be sure I'm too cheap to replace my favorite glasses when I have a perfectly good pair already.

It's the story of my life. My desire to save money trumps my desire for coolness, and I languish a little as I wait for the freak accident that will free me of these non-cool glasses and give me the reason to spend money on something better again. Here's hoping, right?

For your viewing pleasure, I present to you "Sarah: A History in Glasses."



First pair. They were pink and plastic and really not so bad.

Oh gosh. Oh gosh, oh gosh, oh gosh. My mother told me they were very "becoming." I was mad at her for YEARS!
 



I broke them playing a game of tackle football with some friends. The boy who broke the frames with his shoulder apologized nearly to the point of tears, but I thanked him profusely, thinking I could finally replace them. I underestimated my parents...and superglue. Not that the glue held all that well. I just got to wear these horrid glasses AND have a lens pop out and go rolling across my middle school floor at random moments.



















Progress. Still too big, too plastic, and just too much. See how I compensate. Sigh.
 



Apparently, even as a young mother, I still didn't understand the value of my own cheekbones. Oh young Sarah, why you got to wear such big glasses? Why?




We're getting there! A definite improvement! Partially rimless, disappearing into the face...not so bad. Disappearing glasses only work when your eyebrows don't look like bloated caterpillars, though.




Perfection achieved. They were so beautiful. Excuse me for a moment. I need to go cry again.




And here they are. They could be worse. So much worse. (See a few pictures above.) In the grand scheme of things, my glasses are a blessing, no matter how much I hate them. They give me the gift of sight. For that I should be grateful. I mean, I am grateful.

Tackle football game at my house this Saturday!