My four-year-old daughter started wearing glasses this week. The frames are round and raspberry, a tinge lighter and more translucent than my maroon pair of the same shape but similar enough to call us twinsies. She looks simply adorable (as if the vain notion of her appearance is what we should lead with here). Most important of all, she can see.
Many parents have been asking how we knew she needed glasses. Often, I’m told, this happens when kids are a bit older and can articulate their struggle by saying, “the board is blurry,” or you know, “I can’t see.” We learned about Ruby’s vision in a manner I wouldn’t call out of the ordinary, but the experience was significant enough to take something from.
Allow me to preface with the fact that Ruby is quite tall and has not always had great control over her long limbs. Ways she’s been described in the past include, but are not limited to: a linguini noodle, a flamingo, a branch blowing in the wind, a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man, and Gerald from the popular children’s book, Giraffes Can’t Dance. This suited her character as a shy but kind toddler who was tentative with most people, an insecurity we understood given the circumstances under which she was raised as a tiny human who only knew pandemic life as her version of normal.
Fast forward to her four-year-old well visit at the pediatrician’s office, where a nurse brought us straight from the waiting room to the hallway for a vision test. For small children, the poster displays shapes instead of letters, and the nurse directed her to identify certain ones from a distance. But she stood quiet.
“Ruby, what is that a picture of?” I reinforced. “You have to answer the nurse.”
She smiled at me coyly.
“Ruby, come on. You know what that is! Isn’t that an apple?”
Was I encouraging her or tipping her off? We’ll never know, but that’s when I started with the excuses.
“She’s not good with strangers, I’m sorry!” I joked, “A quintessential pandemic baby!”
“Alright, Miss Ruby,” the nurse jotted down some notes and walked us back to the exam room. After a host of other well visit activities, the pediatrician asked Ruby to jump on one foot. Instead, she kept lifting her leg like a flamingo and tipping over.
“We call her a flamingo, that’s why she’s doing that,” I explained.
He asked her to bend down and touch her toes, then walk in a straight line. Let’s just say if it was a sobriety test, she’d be headed straight down to the station.
“She’s quite noodly, isn’t she? She’s also not great at taking instruction. I think it has to do with being home for a year and a half. Maybe being a little sister, too. Her older sister really thrived in preschool during that time, and—”
“She needs to see an ophthalmologist.”
And the rest was history. I’m not sure what basis I had to question him or to even be surprised, but I did, and I was. The notion that there could be a physical reason for Ruby’s noodliness never crossed my mind. But we took her to the pediatric ophthalmologist, and low and behold, she needed glasses. They described her prescription as significant but not severe for her age. Putting aside the logistics of procuring and transitioning a small child into wearing glasses, the news itself shook me to my core.
How on earth did I miss this?
When I Monday morning quarterbacked the past four years, searching for breadcrumbs I should have recognized, of course I found them. Technically, I never really missed them. Ruby was eleven months old when the pandemic began and we pulled her out of daycare for more than a year and a half to raise her at home while working from home. We had more time with her during those early years than we did with her sister. I think that’s what bothers me the most: even in making some of these observations before, I explained them away as something else.
As parents, we often see what we want to see in our children. Maybe that’s fair with youngsters, given we know them better than anyone else does. But we can also get lost in that narrative. One snippet of time, one observation of how they dealt with an experience can convince us that we know more than we do. We want to know everything about them, even at the risk of looking through an old lens.
Pretending to know is much easier than waiting to find out.
I am guilty of painting this picture of Ruby as a supporting character, still so afraid of her own shadow that she could not possibly do this or that. I treat her like she’s flimsy, a delicate flower that wilts at the touch, in need of an advocate at all times. She was once those things. I gave a lot of my own emotional energy to supporting her transition back to preschool, then into a world she never knew the “before” of. But that narrative is tired now.
Teachers, caregivers, and friends know a different Ruby these days. She is an enthusiastic learner who loves her routines at school. She never stops talking. She loves just knowing people and saying hello to anyone she’s ever met, every time she sees them. She is sweet and kind—that hasn’t changed. But she stands on her own two feet and doesn’t need my excuses. It’s a shame other people recognized it sooner than I did, but I guess hindsight is 20/20.
The real gift of these glasses is Ruby’s chance to improve her life. But for the rest of our family, the news came at the perfect time to remind us we don’t know everything about her. We’re about to see much more.
Have you ever sold yourself on something about your kid that just isn’t true? LMK in the comments below!
The little things
Here they are: Ruby’s raspberry glasses. They’re still so new that we don’t have many photos of her in them, but I chose this one to show you the red pipe cleaner glasses we made for her favorite lovey. Now they both can see better!
Also
I read:
The power of radical forgiveness – Salon
Summer weekend cooking kickoff – The Smitten Kitchen Digest
2023’s “Digital Lavender” Color Trend Is Taking Over – Marie Claire
The Tragedy of Shiv Roy – Slate (I enjoyed the commentary in this piece but don’t agree with its final conclusion!)
I watched:
The new Wall Street Journal segment where Doug weighs in on Succession as a financial expert—proud wifeager alert! It’s very fun!
I chopped:
My first few Abundant Summer SaladsTM, which are like a ying to the yang of my Sad Girl LunchesTM. A friend turned me onto this cucumber and sweet pepper salad, which went viral on TikTok and boasts an interesting savory flavor profile alongside the crunch of its star ingredients. My advice is to make in bulk, because it stays well for a couple days.
I (could have) walked:
Forever in my two new summer sandals, which are both little slices of perfection in their own special ways. The Milan flat sandals from Larroude offer more glam than my last pair of staple black sandals, which looked more like Tevas. And I’ve never purchased a pair of Vince sandals I didn’t love, but I swear these Coline strappy sandals in cream are as comfortable as a tennis shoe.
Your wins
Blair saved her kid’s school over a grand by making balloon arches for her daughter’s 5th grade promotion ceremony. She may be “dead inside and have broken fingers, but damn that school will look spirited in the morning.” WTG, Blair!