Transference

Transference is something I struggle with as a parent.  Wikipedia is nice enough to define it here.  But basically, it's the idea that you take your issue, and imagine that others around you, especially one's own children, are having the same emotional experience.  Because, why would anyone perceive the world differently than I do?  That's just madness!

I have my insecurities, like any normal person.  Most of the time I can reason my way around these hang-ups.  I know that my concerns about my posture, my fingernails, my height, etc are not probably the first things people notice about me.  Nor, for the most part can others tell that I'm insecure about this or that characteristic until they get to know me well enough that I confess my deepest fears about myself. 

I suspect the reason people are prone to transferring their insecurities to their children is because it's difficult to imagine that someone who looks and acts so much like you could possibly think any differently than you.  Even though it's fairly likely, as with my own kids, that their socialization is not the same as mine.  Nor is the time or culture that they live in exactly the same.  So, it's silly of me to assume that they'll have the same problems I had as a child.  My impulse, nonetheless, is to protect them from my scars, my fears, my wounds.  To shelter them. 

When I learned a few days ago that my daughter needed glasses a flood of memories and emotions slammed into me.  Not only is she about the same age as I was when I got glasses, but her prescription is almost the same as mine, in the same eyes.  There's not even a hint that her genetics vary from mine. 

My brother and I, in a rare moment of cooperation, rocking our 1980's glasses.  At my grandmother's house, about 1984.

I've known that this was coming since she was a baby.  She was born with a blocked tear duct, and her right eye, even after this cleared up, has never behaved quite like it should.  I could see in photographs that her eye would be slightly turned out.  And when she'd get sleepy, this became more apparent.  It wasn't bad enough that the doctors could call it a lazy eye, but I could see it.  Lately when I looked at her, it was like looking at a photograph of myself without contact lenses in.  I don't know how to describe it exactly, but I tell when I don't have any vision correction.  My eyes just aren't opened as wide.  It's like I squint a bit to focus better. 

We're both very far-sighted.  As it turns out, far-sighted people can compensate for their short eyeballs without correction, for a while at least, it just takes a lot of muscle power, and will eventually cause one's vision to get worse.  It's a good thing too, because I recall spending most of high school, during the school day, without glasses or contacts.  It's stupid, I know.  But that's how self conscious I was.  Can't afford contacts for a couple of years?  Well, I'll just go without ANYTHING!  Yes, I'm stubborn like that. 

Me, at about 16, holding my glasses while the photo was being snapped.  I'm trying hard here to make sure both eyes are straight, and hiding slightly behind my hair in case my right eye betrays me.

Four eyes.  Coke bottles.  Nerd.  X-ray vision.  "Hey, can I try on your glasses?  OMG, how do you see through those things!?"  Dork.  Ugly.  Smart.  Librarian.  Book worm.  "You wouldn't hit a guy with glasses would you?"  Big eyes.  "Why are your eyes so big?"

One of the deepest traumas came in elementary school, maybe second or third grade.  Because I'm from a small town, the bus routes included a mix of kids from the elementary, middle, and high schools for many years.  Little kids, in with big kids.  Kids from a wide variety of backgrounds rode my bus, and I can remember this one boy who was just bent on picking at me.  I don't know who he was was.  I don't think I even knew his name then.  He was older, probably a middle schooler.  He was big and boisterous and I was small and skinny.  I can't even remember what he said to me, but it was relentless.  He laughed at me, and said terrible things to me because of my glasses.  Things I couldn't control.  It went on and on, day after day.   And I remember one day finally just breaking down into sobs the second I stepped off the bus.  I ran down my street, and cried so long and so hard that I think I must have scared my mom.  I couldn't tell her what had happened for a long time.  It was that the kind of cry that shakes your whole body and takes your breath from you.  You try to talk, and more wails just come out.  The kind of cry that you fall asleep after because it's taken everything you have.  The kind of cry that leaves you silent at dinner even after the tears have stopped.

The result of this wound is years of wearing my contact lenses for far too many hours, to the point that I'm nearing the end of my ability to use contact lenses at all.  Going to extreme lengths to keep only the nearest and dearest from seeing me in my glasses.  It took me until adulthood to realize that my eyes are actually large.  Larger than average.  And that this is actually a desirable feature.  And my gorgeous children have them too.

I shot this photo specifically because I was marveling at how large her eyes are.

Long lashes to go with his huge hazel eyes.

 

 

So, I'm starting to get over it.  I'm gradually coming to convince myself that it doesn't matter.  Glasses or contacts.  It doesn't matter.  I've been trying to get Raina excited about the glasses she'll be getting in the next few weeks.  I've let her spray my glasses with lens cleaner.  I've been talking to her about using a case to store them in.  I've been having her wear her sunglasses outside.  I've found a cute doll that I'm hoping to get her for her birthday.  I'm trying to get over my issue, so I don't tranfer my self-consciousness on to her.  As a kid, I think I believed it was possible for a kid wearing glasses to be cute, or pretty.  I remember dreaming of the day that I wouldn't need to wear them.  Longing for contact lenses to free me from my magnified eyes under thick lenses.  I want her know that she's pretty, and that people aren't "just saying that", from the time she's a little girl, and not have to wait till she's older to figure out how lovely and striking she is.  I'm hopeful that perceptions about kids wearing glasses really have evolved, thanks to Harry Potter, but I'm guarded, to say the least. 

Thing is, I'm actually excited for her to get glasses.  The frames she's tried on are super cute.  I'm looking forward to matching her dress for her birthday pictures to her little pink frames, complete with pigtails of course.  And I know that she'll gradually come to appreciate being able to see better.  And maybe, just maybe, it'll make her stand out even more as the bubbly, unique, little squirrel that she is. 

A rare photo of my in my glasses as an adult.  I'm never self-conscious with my bro!  (Despite our seething dorkiness.)