Single Parenthood & I: on Radium & astigmatism (or, a trip to the opticians)
Withe two children in tow, it was time for a first eye test for any of us in too long, and the results were surprising yet unsurprising.
I have to admit, I’d been putting it off for too long. It was clear to me from the way that I was having to squint at the television that my glasses prescription had changed and that I needed a new pair. And there was Wingus (older) and Dingus (younger).
Wingus, I knew for sure, needed glasses. He’d had them before. And broken them before. And then broken another pair. And then another. And so on until I simply decided to give up on this until he could be entrusted to actually look after them to some extent himself. We’re now at that point.
I’ve been on my own with these two for two and half years now, and eye tests was something I just hadn’t really had the time or application for before. We live on the eastern edge of town. Getting to an opticians and back in itself would be a half-afternoon long event, and all three of us would need to do it twice. It might even require hoyking them out of school for an hour or two.
But for me, 2025 is a year of personal renewal. I’ve vowed to stay on top of things this year, and eye tests for all three of us and glasses for whoever needed them seemed like a good idea. The appointment was made, the kids were indeed hoyked out of school an hour early, and off we buggered.
The results of the tests were fascinating. To be clear, these children come from a short-sighted family, at least on my side. I am extremely short-sighted, as is my sister, and as was my mum. I require varifocals and have astigmatism in one eye. So it’s right there in front of us. My dad avoided a need for glasses until he was into middle-age. My mum, to all intents and purposes, was blind by the time she passed.
Wingus, I already knew, needed glasses. He has astigmatism as well, though glasses are expected to fix this. Otherwise, he’s long-sighted. His results came back pretty much as expected. Dingus, to the surprise of everybody, has pretty much perfect vision. He is a touch long-sighted in one eye but this is natural and at such a low level that it’s expected to have completely righted itself by the time he’s finished puberty.
As for me, it was slightly more chaotic. I hadn’t had my previous eye test at this place, so they had to test my glasses first so that they knew my prescription. Having ascertained that I am as blind as a goddam bat, my test confirmed that the previous opticians had over-corrected my prescription, all of which was part of the reason why I was finding vision more difficult than I should have been, even for a pair of glasses five years old.
Design-wise, I chose pretty much as close to my current pair of glasses as I could manage. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The features of my face are pretty rounded, so more angular shapes suit me better. Rectangular it was, then, since I’m not a maniac. I had small metal frames for years, then swapped to a heavier, tortoiseshell, and then on to the inevitable black, because I am entirely predictable.
For Wingus, this sort of decision is tied into something broader. Long-time readers will already be aware of his slightly uncertain place on the gender-spectrum. We continue to play wait and see, but he’s not entirely binary. He still likes a dress—he has recently acquired a frankly startling one covered in sunflower prints which has to be seen to be believed—and prefers his hair longer, though it’s relatively short at the moment.
He knew that he could have whatever he liked, though I did have to draw a line at a large and very bright red pair covered in small cartoon pictures of animals which would have made him look like a child Timmy Mallett impersonator. Frankly I wasn’t prepared to be experiencing such a very specific sort of trauma on a daily basis. He settled instead on a pair which were black on the outside but glow in the dark on the inside. (I have checked, and he’s in no danger of becoming a Radium Girl.)
For the uninitiated, he is the one that really looks like me, even without a pair of specs on. He has brown hair with a wave through it when it grows out. He has near-translucent white skin and freckles. Sometimes when he throws me a look, it’s like looking in a mirror and seeing my younger self gawping back at me. His younger brother still has blonde hair and a slightly more olive-coloured complexion.
But he put those new glasses on and, of course, he became mini-me. And a couple of weeks on…well, he doesn’t quite have a perfect record with them, in terms of wearing them to school every day. Just this morning he got a little bit told off on the way for forgetting to put them on, although I did also have to acknowledge that I should have noticed sooner myself.
I do consider it a lesson, I guess; I believe that it’s important that he starts to take a little more responsibility for things like this, which are ultimately for his own good. He’ll need to, one day. It’s just important not to be a dictator about it, though. There’s a reason why the teacher in Peanuts sounds like that. Sometimes, it’s all kids can hear when adults start yapping on.
Wingus is on the way to wanting his independence. We cook together. We sit and talk about the way of the world. He’s getting older, but his inquisitiveness shows no signs of abating, though there have been points at which I’ve almost wished they might.
Next week’s piece for this particular column, for example, may well have to be on the increasingly impossible skirting around that I am having to do concerning the facts of life. These questions aren’t frequent, but they are becoming increasingly regular. The tempo of that drum beat is starting to pick up and become more insistent.
If I step back and think about all this for half a second, it makes me all the more grateful that all I’ve had to worry about recently is their eyes. That other stuff can wait, for now. What I’ve got to do in the immediate future is remember to check that he’s got them on his face every morning. I’ve set a reminder on my phone for 8.15 every morning now which reads, “MY OLDER CHILD WEARS GLASSES”.
