I kept my eyes closed beneath protective goggles as my husband, Doug, helped me out of the car.  He led me across the parking lot, telling me when to step up, to step down, to stop. It was early morning, and the clatter of my boots across asphalt echoed through the empty parking garage. I walked into the office building, and heard the soft shushing of my steps across carpeting. I listened hard, to make up for the fact that I couldn’t see.

My name was called, and Doug led me again.   I held my hands in front of me, feeling for walls, doorways, the armrest of the chair as I sat down. And then someone lifted the goggles from my face, washed my eyelids with soft cotton, and told me to open my eyes.

There in the far corner of the room, I could see the precise edge of a frame hung over the door.  On the wall to my right I saw the crisp images on the certificate hung on the wall:  “Dr. William Rich, MD, Casey Eye Institute.”  On my left, I saw every detail of my husband’s face, his look expectant, curious.

It was the closest thing to a miracle I have ever known.

My eyes are fairly unremarkable.  Grey-blue, with flecks of navy in certain types of light.  Brown lashes, turning blond at the tips.  I sometimes look at baby pictures of myself and think, “Those eyes staring out of this photograph are the very same eyes I’m using to look at it now.”  More than any part of my body, my eyes seem the most enduring.

I was seven years old and sitting through the pastor’s sermon during a Sunday morning church service, trying so hard to pay attention, when I noticed that the gold frames of the pastor’s glasses seemed to shimmer.  I couldn’t make them stay in one place.  I told my mother, assuming she’d be amused at the magic I could make with my eyes.  She took me to the optometrist and, a few weeks later, the magic was gone, replaced by black, oval-shaped glasses.

I hadn’t realized how much I had been missing until I wore those plastic frames.  I could read the writing on the chalkboard at school.  I could see faces clearly at a distance.  But I was the only one in my class wearing glasses and–given the originality of second graders–was soon nick-named “Four-Eyes.”  Not a good thing when you’re a shy bookworm.  There were other nuisances.  Every time I boarded the school bus on a cold, snowy, Colorado morning, my glasses fogged up as I tried to find a seat. The lenses acquired a constant greasy sheen I tried to wipe clean with the hem of my shirt. Still, I was grateful to be able to see.

I got contact lenses when I was 17 and felt liberated and, for the first time, pretty.  Yet I sometimes felt limited in what I could do:  Water in my eyes was a problem.  Wind was a hazard.  I once lost a contact lens when a friend put her hands over my eyes and said, “Guess who.”  And yet I wore my lenses 18 to 20 hours a day, putting up with red, scratchy eyes in exchange for good vision.

Once, as an adult, I went swimming on a California beach.  I, of course, removed my contacts first and stored them in their little pink plastic case.  I toweled off after my swim and, uncharacteristically acting on impulse, decided to run barefoot to the other end of the beach.  I didn’t have wetting solution to put my contacts back in, so I figured I’d run “blind.”  I could see large shapes and colors, and, as a game, tried to identify the fuzzy images I ran past.  There was a blue bicycle in the sand.  A couple had spread a blanket and a picnic basket on the sand and was eating lunch.  A group of men up ahead were throwing a Frisbee.  But there was something funny about the color of the men’s swimming suits.  I squinted my eyes to see better, craning my neck as I jogged past.  They laughed at me, stopped their game and stared back.  It was then that I figured it out:  They were naked.  I had run onto a nude beach.  I wished I could, like a clam, dig myself under the sand.

Nevertheless, I’d established a sort of uneasy peace with my vision.  I could read, drive, and apply mascara like a person with normal vision. I also understood that in classical literature, sightless characters were also blessed with inner vision and wisdom.  The “blind” could see things invisible to other people.  I told myself that what I lost in physical skills, I gained in wisdom. There were worse things.

And yet, moving further into my 40’s, I started needing reading glasses.  Suddenly, the thought of wearing both contacts and glasses seemed intolerable.  I’d put up with my limitations all my life with fairly good grace.  Now I wanted to fight back.  How many things had I not attempted, or decided it was too much trouble to take on because of my vision?  Why did I give up on playing in the pool with my kids, or camping, or learning to throw a ball just because it was harder with glasses or contacts?  I’d kept my eyes closed.  For almost 40 years.

So in October of 2005, I decided to risk losing my “inner” vision by having Lasik surgery.  The following morning, I opened my eyes for the first time and could see more perfectly than I had even as a young child.  I now see better than anyone in my family, and annoy them constantly with my ability to read fine print on far-away signs.  I point out street signs before anyone else.  I walk past the eye care products in the grocery store with a smug grin.

It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the vision I had.  I did, and I took advantage of every opportunity technology gave me to see.  Somewhere along they way, however, I started using my poor vision as a reason to opt out of certain activities, to unnecessarily limit my opportunities.  Is it too late to change? Too late to look at things differently?  I’ll just have to see.