Jan 14, 2003

After wearing my glasses to read and watch TV since I was 14 or 15, for the past year or two I also wore them to work on the computer at the newspaper office where I had a full-time job (which I no longer have, and don't much miss) back in Alberta. I have the kind of left eye that can see well close-up, but things far away have blurry edges.

Suddenly this fall, when I was doing some hand-mending, I noticed I could see the stitches and needle better without my glasses on. Then I noticed I could read better without my glasses on, with less straining. I figured something had to be up.

I went to the optometrist with the concern that I’d contracted some debilitating eye disease, only to be assured that at my age -- the early forties -- this is exactly what happens to the eyes. There is nothing to be done about it, but in a couple years I will probably have to get bifocals.

The worst thing I have to put up with now is when reading while watching TV. I have to keep taking the glasses off and putting them back on, because I need them to see the TV clearly but they make the printed word on the page a bit fuzzy.

My God, what is going to happen next? I’ll be 44 in two weeks; is my body scheduled to start falling apart?

I’m only kidding, of course, though the popular wisdom is that in the late forties, it begins to happen to us all.

The last of the sugar cookies went today. The Christmas season is officially over.