Crossing Over

This month I have crossed over. I thought I could avoid it. I thought if I ate enough leafy green vegetables, did my eyeball-yoga, and drank enough water, I could avoid it.

But it came for me anyway.

Genetics trumps eyeball-yoga.

About ten years ago, I walked into my mom's house and saw her reading. She had a pair of reading glasses on over her regular eyeglasses. She has a little nose so the two pair of glasses didn't really fit on the bridge. It was both funny and horrifying. As the mother goes, so does the daughter.

The last time I went to the optometrist, he told me (young, young man that he was) that I probably had one more year to go before I needed bifocals. I'd already succumbed to reading glasses with my contacts because it was more horrifying to stand in front of my class and not be able to read from the textbook than it was to take on and off stylish reading glasses. I developed a swish and a flair with the ceremonious taking on and off of the purple glasses. I pushed them down on my nose so I could peer over them in true old-lady-English-teacher fashion. I was one step away from polyester and a beehive hairdo.

But bifocals. That's different. It is simply not possible that I am a person of enough miles to need those things.

The next thing that has come for me is the inability to wear my contacts more than about ten hours a day. They told me this would come for me too, but I did not believe it. I floss. I stretch. I eat barley. But it did. So, when I get home from work and put on my glasses, I cannot read anything because, um, I can't see the pages.

Unless...

I put on a pair of reading glasses OVER my existing eyeglasses. I have a little nose too. I'm sure it's both funny and horrifying. But, um, I can read again at night. And as long as I can put one pair of glasses over another, I won't need to get a bifocal prescription. Right?

Right.

This post is for our kitty, Shelter. 

She grew old and sick in the last year with no attachment to what had come before.  

We had to put her down on Friday, and in that moment too, with all of us holding her,

she still had no attachment to what had come before, 

and no concern about what was coming next. 

We love you.