Through Her Eyes

She stood about two feet away from me, just a little below my eye level. I was sitting down and she was standing. She looked straight at me, first looking directly at my eyes, then taking in my whole face. Her gaze was unwavering. After a minute or so, she said, emphatically, “You are not my grandmother.” Then she put her "blankie," that she’d named, “Woobie,” to her face for comfort.

I waited only the seconds it took for my brain to process the situation, laughing inside at the reality of what she was seeing, then I swooped her into my arms, Woobie and all, buried my face in her neck and said, “Of course I am. And here are your too-many kisses, mwaa,mwaa, mwaa, mwaa, mwaa,mwaa, mwaa, mwaa...”

She melted in my arms, laughed and said, “Do it again, Gagi!”

She was a bright kid and could talk a “blue streak,” and because there are not too many demands for visual acuity put on toddlers, no one in the family had suspected that she was farsighted. I don’t recall ever seeing her stumble into any furniture. The blurred detail of objects hadn’t prevented her from learning all of her colors. She could count to twenty and recite the alphabet. She could name all of the family members in the photo albums, but what we hadn’t realized was that she’d memorized the sequence of pictures. Oh, she was a bright little rascal, alright. She had us fooled.

They say that when one of your senses is afflicted the others will often compensate. She’d become expert at impersonations. She would watch the movements of others from afar and imitate. To see her tuck her doll into the doll stroller, murmuring comforts to the doll and occasionally shaking a finger at the doll in reprimand, kept me from suspecting that anything was amiss. Once, she and I had listened together to Southern folk songs. Later I’d sung the tune to her using the words, “Lord, Lord...” from the song. She said, “No, it’s like this: “Lawd, Lawd...” her sweet voice in perfect mimicry. 

Sometime between the age of two and three, a sharp instructor at the local park district noticed something and mentioned it to her parents. A trip to the pediatric eye specialist and an explanation of hyperopia and it all began to make sense. “Duh,” I said to myself when I heard the news, “You idiot! Why else would a toddler put on an adults’ reading spectacles and actually enjoy viewing through the glass? And you call yourself a grandmother?!” But, that’s the trouble with hindsight, in most cases it’s pretty much a useless tool.

I spent a couple of days with her on her first week with her new eyeglasses and I saw through her eyes, so to speak, some of her revelations. It was time for a snack and I’d baked muffins for us. She was hungry and anxious for them to cool. “Let’s cut one in half and it will cool faster,” I offered. She was standing next to me as I split the muffin. I saw her step back in surprise when she saw the steam rise from within the treat. She’d never seen steam before. As I explained the science of it to her, I thought of how she’d missed this subtle sign that would warn a child that food was too hot to bite into.

Raisins were a favorite of hers, but with eyes that could now clearly focus on the much-wrinkled fruit, she looked at them with distain, as if to say, “Is this what I’ve been eating?” I encouraged her to try them anyway and eventually she agreed that looks weren’t everything and she happily munched away.

Which is why I immediately saw the humor in her first-ever, clear look at me. Hyperopia had softened and blurred all the hard lines, creases and wrinkles time had sculpted onto my face. It must have been quite the shock to her eyes. But, a hug, some whispers of love and kisses were all it took to help her discern that “Yup, looks aren’t everything.”