I can see clearly now

“So, what colour do you want?” Tamy, the optometric assistant, asked Ryland as we looked at the rack full of children’s glasses.

“Black,” Ryland said confidently.

“Are you sure?” she asked again. “We have all these fun colours, blue, green, red…”

“I want black.”

“Okay.”

I chuckled. I knew why he wanted black. His Kuya Reggie wears glasses with black frames.

Tamy took a couple of glasses from the rack and showed them to Ryland. There was a round one and a rectangular one. Ryland immediately picked the rectangular one to try on first. I had a feeling that it was the one. Reggie wears a black rectangular frame. I have written before how my younger kids tend to copy their older brother/s.

He looked at the mirror. The glasses looked good on him. But I told him to also try the other one. He did and looked at the mirror again. “I don’t like this. I like the other one better,” he said. He wore the rectangular one and smiled when he looked at himself in the mirror once more.

He looked smart with glasses on. And he knew how to pick a good one. It’s very stylish. Just two nights before he cried when I reminded him of his appointment with the optometrist and the possibility that he would be wearing glasses. He said that he would look ugly. I assured him that of course he wouldn’t.

When we were at the bus stop on our way home, he said that he could read the billboard on the bus that was on the other side of the street. I guess before, he wouldn’t even notice those. It reminded me of the first time I had to wear glasses.

It was about five years ago. I was worried that my eyesight was starting to fail me. And I wasn’t that old. I couldn’t even see my child clearly when we were standing just a few feet apart in our hallway upstairs. I blamed the pink eye (sore eyes as we call it in the Philippines) that I just had. But after a trip to the ophthalmologist’s office, I learned that I only needed to wear eyeglasses.

The first time I wore my glasses, I felt sort of in a whirl. Everything just became a lot clearer. Every colour became vivid. I didn’t realize until then that if I didn’t have my glasses on, everything from about ten feet and beyond was just a sea of fuzziness.

The day I got my glasses, I found myself singing ...

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone,
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day
It's gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-Shiny day

If Ryland knew that song, I guess he would be singing it, too.