ageing

A step too far.

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Never imagined one day it would become a part of my body. When I was twenty-three, I romanticized it. I put it on to look professorial and convince people that I was a doctor, in the hope they’d take me seriously.

My friends were flummoxed by the sudden appearance of this thing on my face. Really? Since when?

I could hear my dad thinking, “There go her marriage prospects.”

I hid the fact that it was purely cosmetic. For my eyes only. I was having fun with my heavy-framed Zero power glasses.

All these years, I got away without them. As I approach my 60th birthday, I need 1.5 times magnification if I want to read or write for any more than 15 minutes.

So far, this has happened only once – I’ve been looking for them everywhere while they’ve been perched on my forehead. Yes. Very amusing for Si. Am sure Saagar would’ve had a good laugh too.

It has been suggested that this might be the right time to string them around my neck, so I don’t have to look for them. Nope. Thank you. That just seems a step too far. I haven’t even been tempted to check what’s available online.

Even though my hair is all grey, that’s a kind of declaration I’m not yet ready to make.

Denials.

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Amongst the heap of books with colourful book-marks popping out at jaunty angles, amidst the papers printed and plain lounging about, inside a laptop open but its screen black, behind a glass of orange juice half-full, inside a bunch of blue and purple pens and underneath a lime-green I-pad. I looked everywhere. Could I find it? Nope.

After 2 years of carrying it with me all over the world at the bottom of my handbag, hidden inside a red polka-dotted Cath Kidston case. Never letting it out for fresh air. Squinting my eyes to the point of distortion. Cocking my neck to extremes. Adjusting the length of my arms till they wail. I pushed it as far into the future as possible. Avoiding reading as much as I could, especially the list of ingredients on a packet of food or drink in the supermarket. Enlarging the text-font on my phone so much that people whose eyes might fall on the screen would spontaneously burst into a loud laugh.

It had been long overdue. This change. It’s here now.

No glasses, no reading. No glasses, no writing. The pair had to be found.

Went upstairs to peer under my pillow, just in case … not there. Popped over to the dressing table and caught a flying glimpse of it … in the mirror … perched on top of my more-salt-less-pepper head of hair.

Now it was my turn to laugh out loud. I used to make fun of my dad when he went up and down demanding his glasses to appear – if it wasn’t this pair, it was that. And now it’s me. Si threatens to buy me a string of loosely put together baroque pearls to hold my reading glasses firmly around my neck. That would be too much of a declaration. It’s too early yet. I believe that was a one-off. Yes, what has happened cannot be undone but its highly unlikely to happen again. Isn’t it?