Body and Soul: What we see, and what we can't: "What we see, and what we can't

I've worn glasses since third grade -- sort of.

Toward the end of third grade, I got a pair of ugly, pale blue, cat's-eye glasses. I mean, looking back at old photographs, I can see that they're ugly, embarassingly ugly, but at the time I thought they were fabulous. I remember walking around the house, looking through them, then pulling them down my nose to peer over the top, so I could compare my new world with the world I used to look at. I was amazed by all the sharp edges in the world that I had never seen before. So this is the way things looked to everyone else. I could see everything!

In fifth grade, my glasses broke. A tether ball hit me in the face and knocked them across the playground. The frames broke into several pieces when they hit the blacktop. I tried Scotch taping them back together, but they were too far gone, and I finally had to throw them away.

Normally that would be a nuisance, not a tragedy. Glasses can be replaced. But something had happened between the year I got the glasses and the year I broke them. When I was in fourth grade, my mother had gotten tired of being beaten up, and had put a continent's distance between my father and us. All in all, that was a very good thing, but a thirty-six-year-old woman who's been out of the job market for a few years doesn't make a lot of money, especially one who's only had menial jobs. And it doesn't help if she's missing teeth.

i didn't get glasses until about three years after i'd needed them, but it was because the doctor kept insisting that i didn't actually need them, rather than because of money issues.

jeanne d'arc writes about her childhood, her mother, and how the little stuff that gets cut from the insurance plans of those of us who have jobs with insurance is so vital and so expensive.