This Shouldn't Happen to Me

One of the primary functions of this blog is to keep my mother up-to-date on the goings-on in my life. With nine children (because Gracey asked how many Gingerbreads there were - stacks, my dear, there are stacks of us), she has a hard time trying to keep tabs on our comings and goings. Bloggerdom helps her track our misdemeanors more efficiently.

Anyway - Mammy: I went to the optician and my eyes are getting better.
That is the essence of this post. My eyesight was getting progressively worse with each passing year, but this visit to the optician turned up an astonishing result: now my eyesight is suddenly improving. I was squirming in joy in the optician's chair, happy to know that I wouldn't end up with bi-focals as thick as jam-jar bottoms, when Ms Optician effectively burst my bubble by telling me that it might be the first signs of presbyopia - age-related far-sightedness. I was outraged - outraged, I tell you. Well, I was on the inside; outside I just meekly said, "Oh, really?"

I'm 35 and three-quarters. And leaving the optician's - actually, as I reeled out the door in shock - it occured to me that I have now tipped the scales on my thirties and am sliding towards forty. FORTY! I thought forty happened to other people, certainly not to me. I went home to share the sad news with my husband ("My darling, I fear it is my duty to tell you that we are aging"), who gallantly allowed me to feel better by giving me permission to count his grey hairs (eleven, of which nine were allegedly my doing.) It does not help that Mr G and I celebrated our eight-year anniversary this week. Rather than do anything celebratory, we spent the day shaking our heads at one another and saying things like, "Where did the last eight years go?" We kind of feel like people who were mugged by Father Time. He shook us up and robbed our wallets. At gunpoint. At least, that's how it feels.

P.S. when I went back to the optician today, she asked me if I'd had thyroid issues around the time I got my last glasses. Yes, actually, I had. It turns out that that may have had more to do with the spike in my vision than the fact that I am currently hurtling towards senior citizenship at breakneck speed. I feel slightly mollified, but only very slightly. I won't order the zimmerframe just yet, then.