At home, I ran through the house to stand on the back porch looking north at the Ball Brothers factory, hundreds of feet away. I saw every leaf on every tree for miles around (well, almost miles), every petal and color on every flower, all the rocks in the railroad beds. I said, “Mammaw! I can see leaves! I can see the grass! I see the letters on the train cars way down there at Ball Brothers!” I felt elated and giddy for the first time in my life, though some of that elation faded when I went to school that fall and some stupid kid called me “four eyes” the first time.
Anyway, Mammaw smiled, hugged me, and we went in to make lunch. For two weeks, I exclaimed over everything I’d never seen before. No kid ever enjoyed seeing mundane items as much as me. Now I know why I flunked two grades and had to get so close to my father when he was making my little pool behind the river house, why he yelled at me for being so close, so underfoot. My world before glasses had been tiny, only seeing near things, like the ground. Once I was no longer a baby, I rarely saw my parents’ faces in detail, only my brothers’. I don’t quite know what to think about this revelation at age 60.