My six-year-old daughter, S, got her first pair of glasses recently. At her optometrist’s office, I’d had to summon all the positivity I’d got to not burden the doctor with my anguish as he told me that S’s myopia must be hereditary (both my husband and I are nearsighted) and her eyesight would continue to deteriorate down the road, especially faster at times of growth spurts.
That night, I kept asking myself if I could have done anything differently to prevent or at least delay the onset of myopia in my child. The answer (also the answer from my husband, who had to answer a myriad of guilt-ridden questions from me that night) was ultimately “No.”
And so I started asking what I could do differently from now on. I remembered the optometrist advising us to spend more time outside, and thus decided to purchase an outdoor table set so we could eat or read or just relax out on the little balcony of our apartment. That way, we would be able to have some outdoorsy time even when S doesn’t feel like leaving home. She would, as a result, have more chances to look at distant objects and relax her eyes. I was happy that I found a way for a positive change in the wake of a loss, a loss of 20/20 vision on the part of my child.
However, the instant feeling of happiness was not strong enough to lift me out of my overall mood because the next day, I was still sad about S’s myopia and somehow felt drained physically. To make matters worse, S got up on the wrong side of the bed. In retrospect, she might have simply mirrored my mood because when she woke up that morning, she said she felt mad that I sounded so tired. I should have reassured her that my feeling tired had nothing to do with her and therefore she didn’t have to feel guilty or mad about it, but it was a school morning and I couldn’t find time or patience to reflect on my thoughts and feelings to express them in a way that a six-year-old could easily understand; I had just enough patience to stay cool, serve her breakfast, pack her snack and lunch, and then ask her to go upstairs and brush her teeth.
Now she didn’t like my asking her to brush her teeth.
As soon as she calmed herself down and brushed her teeth, we headed out. On our walk to her school, I asked her what she thought made her so angry earlier. Here is her response and our subsequent conversation.
S: I wanted to stay around you downstairs — I didn’t want to go upstairs and brush my teeth.
Me: But you know you have a toothbrush in the downstairs bathroom,too.
S: Yeah, but I always brush my teeth upstairs.
Me: But if you want to stay around me, what do you think you can do next time?
S: Brush my teeth downstairs.
Another change. After another loss, a loss of a peaceful morning.
And a gain, in the form of gratitude, that she understood her feelings, parsed them, and shared them with me.
