Contacts

http://polaroid41.com/contacts/

Sunday December 6th, 2020 - 4:34pm.

I first got glasses at age 12. There are definitely more than a few awkward photos of me with big oval frames and frizzy hair between ages 12 and 15, but I never wore them all the time. I didn’t like the way I looked in them, didn’t like the feeling of something on my face and didn’t like the way the things split in two when I looked down and accidentally saw both the in focus world through the lenses and the blurry world around the edges.

I wore them less and less until finally around age 16 my mom took me to get contacts. They were so uncomfortable at first and I didn’t like putting something in my eye. I felt like I’d never get the hang of it, but I was determined and I persevered. I distinctly remember looking around outside and being surprised to see individual leaves on trees rather than just a vague, indistinct green. The world around me was suddenly crisp, clear, detailed. Funnily, I’ve talked to multiple other people who have the same memory of noticing leaves on trees after finally starting to wear glasses or contacts after a long period of avoiding them. It must be a rite of passage for the visually impaired.

Twenty-five years later, I wear my contacts so often that most people don’t realize that I need my vision corrected because they’ve never seen me in my glasses and my contacts are essentially invisible. That said, I’m aware that they are always between the world and me. They see what I see; they are, on the most basic level, the ‘how’ of how I see the world. I have monthly contacts which means they are disposable, but I can use them every day for about a month before I need to discard them and open a new pair. I’m not very particular about the timing, I don’t change them on the first of the month every month or anything, I just wear them and after about 4 - 5 weeks they start to feel less comfortable and I realize it’s time to grab a new pair.

This last time though, I was deliberate about when I opened my new contacts: I put them in on the morning of October 29th, the last day of freedom before our second lockdown of the year. It was a beautiful sunny fall day, I wore

a dress and my new long black coat and I went to lunch with friends on the other side of town. With the lockdown looming, everything closing, and restrictions requiring us to stay within 0.6 miles of home, I wanted the contacts that I’d be wearing for the next month to at least see a little bit of the world first.

My contacts and I looked around at the packed restaurant full of people having a last hurrah. I watched my friends smiling and talking animatedly. I had seared tuna and a drink and a coffee and some dessert I didn’t even want, just because I could. On the way home, I got off at a stop in the center of town and walked the rest of the way, wandering through the streets of Toulouse, taking it all in. During the last lockdown I watched the world slowly transform from winter to spring and this time I knew I would be watching the transformation from fall to winter.

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Polaroid photo and full text available at: http://polaroid41.com/contacts/