Dreaming of Tomorrow, the third book in my Tomorrow series, opens with the scene of Logan De Witt in the doctor’s office trying out a new pair of glasses for the first time.
“Your new spectacles will help you with reading and also with seeing objects in the distance,” the doctor told him.
Reverend Logan De Witt held out 28 years before he met with changing eyesight. These new glasses promised to enhance his life in much-needed ways, but his new and refined depth perception would take some getting used to.
I included a scene like this at the opening of the book to set us up for Logan’s growth as a leader. He gets married in Dreaming of Tomorrow, so he has excitement as well as some reservations about his future. He wants his vision to serve him well down through the years as he gets established as a spiritual leader and begins a marriage.
I’ve been in Logan’s situation many times, going to the doctor for a new pair of glasses. Logan’s appointments were held in the clinic of the rural, small-town doctor back in the 1910’s, whereas mine took place in the clinic of an optometrist, surrounded by specialized equipment in the 1980’s and 90’s.
Every twelve to eighteen months my eyes would worsen with near-sightedness until my mother would take me to the eye doctor again for another change in my prescription. The lenses got thicker and thicker, making me look nerdier and nerdier. The last thing a grade-school girl wanted, especially in the 80’s when lenses were large, taking up most of the space on my face, was to appear before the world as a geeky, intellectual type who liked books.
Ah, but then my freshman year of high school arrived, allowing me to get contacts. What a relief! The weight of heavy lenses was gone, along with the humiliation of looking like the bookworm, the lover or reading, studying, and writing that I really was.
I remember the fear that accompanied each trip to the eye doctor. When would my eyes stop getting worse? Maybe they wouldn’t. Was it possible that my eyes would continue to decline until I went blind? I couldn’t stand that thought. Beauty in the world round me was taken in through my eyes. How would I see light and color? And what about reading? New ideas that fueled my imagination came from words on the page, and only from my ability to see them in the first place.
In those years while I was learning to get along with glasses, the classic TV show, Newhart, aired. It came on every Monday night at 8:30. Our family watched it devotedly. My dad was on the church consistory, which met once a month on Monday nights. This created a serious conflict of interest. On those nights when Dad had to miss a show, we’d push a tape into the VCR player (those were the days) and record the episode so that he could watch it later.
Newhart stood out to me because the main character, Dick Loudon, inn keeper and author of how-to books, wore glasses. They were little half-glasses he used for reading, coming in handy for deciphering small print, and quite convenient for sending looks of disbelief or skepticism over the top edges.
Dick Loudon evoked strong mixed feelings for me. I identified with his cardigan-wearing, introverted author persona while also carrying a secret dread of ending up like him. As a grade-schooler, I thought it would be grand to live in a historic area like New England and have something to write about, but I couldn’t imagine the humiliation of having to wear reading glasses. Who in the world would want to try and look like a nerdy, writer-reader type?
In April I visited my eye doctor here in Pella. Different one from my childhood, but the same modern kind of office with similar specialized equipment.
“You made it quite a way into your forties before your eyes started to change,” he said to me. “But now we need to think about different options for contacts.”
Those words took me back in time until I was a sixth grader again, hearing the eye doctor suggest yet another move to stronger lenses. But things weren’t going to be as simple this time as they were forty years ago. My Pella eye doctor adjusted the strength of my contacts (thankfully I can still wear them) but the change did nothing for the clarity of my up-close, fine-print reading.
Oh, dear. I knew what was coming. His assistant sent me home with the suggestion to invest in a pair of—you guessed it—Dick Loudon-looking nerdy, reader-writer-type reading glasses.
I went to Wal-Mart and found the most chic pair I possibly could, but I fear that they aren’t chic enough to rescue me from the sorry facts.
I took this picture of myself last week, seated in front of my shelves of books in the place where I do my writing. Quite honestly, it gave me a good laugh. The very thing I lived in childish dread of has happened. I must now wear the reading glasses to see fine print in the books I study to write messages and to do research for fiction projects.
As the doctor said, I held out a pretty long time, but now a change has come, and it’s come during a time in my life when the themes from both fictional characters, Logan De Witt and Dick Loudon have surfaced in my life.
Like Logan, I long for my vision to serve me well as I continue to grow as a leader. And as far as the themes from how-to author Dick Loudon goes, I’ve faced one of my worst fears and found reasons to laugh in the process, something he helped us do during all those years on the air.
Going back and watching those shows as an author, I’ve also discovered that I can relate to the challenges and concerns he had as a writer. The reading glasses have become a piece of this season of life, aiding me in my pastoral chaplain role, assisting my studying and writing, and keeping me in touch with the humorous side of things.
