“The first thing you’ll notice are the leaves on the trees.” The optometrist offered in comfort to Sophie, whose attention was fixed on the delicate lines on her palms. They were two inches away from her face, and upon hearing the optometrist’s words, she pushed her face into them and tried to breathe.
“Sophie, are you okay?” her mother, out of concern, walked over to her. Sophie was crying so hard her sobs moved inward and she could not breathe enough to speak.
“Don’t baby her, she’ll get used to it.” Sophie’s dad barked, while unbuttoning the sleeve on his shirt and looking at the gauze that wrapped his arm. Blood from his wound was pink beneath its thin surface. When the optometrist’s eyes paused on it, Sophie’s dad Stephen glared at him like he was road construction.
Sophie’s mom moved away and looked at a row of sunglasses. She started to cough in an almost violent way, but put her hand at the top of her chest and seemed to pull herself back into her own body. The doctor looked away from Sophie and at her with concern, she nodded and they both looked back at Sophie.
“A lot of kids wear glasses. In fact, you might want to keep an eye on these, or kids will think they’re cool and take them,” the optometrist’s hands produced a pair of silver-rimmed round glasses from a drawer in the counter he was sitting behind. Sophie looked up and pushed the loose strands of soft blonde hair behind her ears, “It’s the ones you picked out last week.” She reached out and took them by the bridge of the nose and put them on her face. The optometrist pulled them off again slowly, “I’ll just fix frame for you, looks like one ear hangs lower than the other.”
“Is that something we should be concerned about?” Sophie’s mom asked.
“No, no, just have to adjust these,” he worked on the frames with a set of small tools, “That’s all.” When they were done she pushed them back on her face. “Nobody’s perfect,” he said, smiling, “but you’re going to see so much more of the world with these.”
She was going to a new school in two months, her first public school. Earlier, she spent kindergarten and the first two grades in Montessori school, but her father thought she needed more structure in her learning. The kids at the new school would never know that she used to be normal, without glasses. “You’re going to see so much more.” He repeated, as if she had not heard her.
She held her mom’s hand and walked out of the optometrist’s office. The bright summer sun caused her eyes to squint, but as soon as she adjusted to the light her eyes moved instinctively to the sound of rustling leaves in the trees. She could see the individual life of each leaf, each wiry nutritive system. She looked down at a newspaper vending machine that was chained to a bolt in the sidewalk. She could read the headline and first paragraph of the local observer as if it were inches from her face. They story was about a soldier who lived in the area but died in a helicopter accident when their radio went out and they took on friendly fire. He left behind a wife and a-
“Hurry up!” her dad barked at her. She had let go of her mother’s hand and was trailing behind them. “It’s already past dinner time, I’m hungry!” Without trying to complete the story, she turned away and followed them.