This week, another snip from my childhood. In second grade I learned this word: squint.
I found out I had been doing it. My dear teacher, Mrs. Love (I couldn’t have made that up), noticed how my face scrunched during math time, as I tried to make out problems on the board. She reported this to my parents.
There’s little doubt how it happened. Like most kids, I had a bedtime. For us first-generation TV children the schedule easily corresponded with programs. (I will always associate the closing music of some shows – Flipper, Get Smart, Bonanza, Lost in Space – with having to go to bed.) Before second grade we moved to a remodeled, older parsonage next door to the church, with an entryway and a grand (at least it was grand to us) staircase. Each night after TV I dragged myself slowly up the carpeted stairs to my room at the top landing. If I was lucky, I had remembered to close my window shades earlier; if not, there was blackness outside where an alien face might be lurking.
After tugging down the shades, slipping on my nightie, and rearranging a dozen stuffed toys on my bed, I was out with the light. Or was I?
The hall light remained on, comforting my brothers in their room. In its dim illumination I found my greatest comfort, reading the book from beneath my pillow. I knew I shouldn’t stay up reading, and so it was a thrill. I also dreaded the coming new day, because, despite Mrs. Love and the chalkboard smell and the bright green shrubs outside our class window, I had issues with school. It was a weird thing to do, going away from my home and my mommy and brothers each morning. Wearing a dress, as well, making every day except Saturday a bit of torture.
Stories kept my heart and mind alive; I couldn’t resist them. Later, after the optometrist fitted my first pair of glasses, my parents discovered my reading habits and gave me a bedside desk with a lamp. But I was already ultra-myopic.
Somehow, though, nearsightedness has helped me hang onto my own space and the thrill of being just me. It cocoons me at the swimming pool, where I still remove even my contacts before going under water. I know then what it would be like to be legally blind. And I’m not worried about it. Always seeing beyond my nose is overrated. Squinting doesn’t help, but still I do so, when my dear husband appears to be approaching. I like letting him into my world.
