Rhona Canoy SO… Each and every person who knows me from since I was a child will remember that I wore glasses with very thick lenses. Even I myself have few and vague (at best) memories of being able to see clearly. For most of my life, how I woke up in the morning was a habit built over time. Most people take for granted that they can see their toes upon opening their eyes. That was a luxury not afforded to me. My first waking act was to find my glasses, because I mostly fell asleep with them on and they would invariably get lost in my covers. Getting up out of bed without them was inconceivable because everything more than three inches from my eyeball was only a fuzzy blotch of color. I cannot imagine how I maneuvered my way through life this way, but I know what brought me to that point. Being a precocious child, I somehow had managed to teach myself to read before I was four years old and by the time I was five, I had become a voracious reader (my one true addiction, sadly now given up). Not of children’s books, mind you. I tired of those after the first few months of reading. Reading in poor light, by candlelight, by flashlight, I had no consideration of how this was going to affect my ability to see in the future. Here’s one thing most people don’t realize as much. Since I didn’t know my eyesight was bad, I never questioned how the world was supposed to look and accepted it as reality. I did all my reading and writing with the materials only inches from my nose. My grade school classmates will attest to that. It was not until my fourth grade teacher realized that I was copying my math problems from the blackboard all wrong. Although to give myself credit, I solved the wrongly copied problems correctly. She recommended that I be brought to the eye doctor. When I was asked to read the eye chart, my optician was flabbergasted to find that even the largest letter on the chart was a blur to me. So I was fitted with my first pair of glasses. I remember my amazement at how the world was, seeing everything so clearly. I remember that I never knew how detailed trees were, because the leaves had only looked like one big blob of green to me. And faces fascinated me, especially people’s expressions. And discovering that I could read people’s faces. Although that took more practice than reading books. Having glasses became a way of life, and my relationship with them blossomed over time. I couldn’t stand contact lenses because they were time-consuming and actually were more for vanity than anything else. I also found out that I could hide my emotions behind those thick lenses. Losing my vision in my left eye when I was thirty-one was a lesson in acceptance and taught me that positivity determines how one faces life. I chose not to be devastated. And I chose to be grateful that I still had one good eye. When I finally got lasik’ed, I remember feeling vulnerable because I never learned the art of practiced facial expressions, and my eyes were evidently more expressive than I knew them to be. Sarcasm, irony, disdain, anger, sadness, disappointment… were all emotions I never learned to hide. It must have been as difficult for people who knew me, having to deal with it. My journey with my eyesight continues, except now my ophthalmic surgeon (Dr Vic Cajita of ACES is truly a godsend, but that is a wondrous and separate story in itself) diligently makes sure that he can prevent me from going totally blind while I’m still alive, especially since I have only one functioning eye. And my life goes on. There are too many exciting things to see (while I still can) and do (that don’t need eyesight after all). Friends ask me how I manage to stay upbeat about it. Let me tell you, that’s not hard to do at all. After all, I’m only losing my eyesight. I lost my mind a long time ago.