Three pairs of glasses

Last summer I capsized my little kayak, out on the too-rough waters of the bay.  As I was going over I watched my glasses fall into the clear water and drift slowly to the sandy bottom, just out of reach of my foot.  I stood there chest-deep, my lifejacket preventing me from ducking quickly down to pick them up, as the wind blew hard against my half-floating kayak, dragging me slowly away from my glasses.  I pulled my kayak to the shore, where I could dump out the water and pull it up on the beach and then return to the spot where I last had seen my glasses.  No chance.  No glasses.  Unable to drive in my extreme nearsightedness, I walked the mile home, got an older pair, and walked back to drive the car home. 

The first thing I do each morning is to reach for my glasses, where I had left them the night before on the desk in my study.  I feel for them, unable to see without squinting and bringing my face down to the desk level.  The fact that I rely upon them for sight struck me one morning as I sat down at my desk in my morning rubric of reflection before writing this blog.  I looked around my desk and saw two other pairs of glasses; three in all including the one I was wearing.  I realized that each of those pairs of glasses led me to different things.  One pair is for my workshop, large bifocal lenses becoming thick around the edges, too ugly to wear in public but perfect for safety during woodworking.  Another pair is my good pair, its glare-free lenses saved from any scratching by careful cleaning; it’s the one I wear in public, when eye contact is important.  The third pair, the one I generally reach for, in my old pair, the one I wear around the house and don’t worry about.  I realized that the moment I put on the particular pair of glasses, I am entering a particular world, taking on a particular character.  I become a woodworker, or a social person, or a homebody, depending on which pair I put on.

I thought of my Polish grandfather’s silver-rimmed spectacles on the shelf above my workbench, under the “Boze Blogoslaw Nasz Dom” (God bless our home) sign that hung in his living room.  He was the woodworker, the quiet, monastic, mysterious person who passed down the woodworking gene to my dad, my uncles, and to me.  I imagined, in my reverie, putting them on and seeing as he would see.  The thought moved me, the idea of being able to see through another person’s eyes by putting on their glasses.

I imagined writing a book, a book that would be brought to life by the central character, a quiet, monastic person perhaps, who would put on other people’s glasses and take on that person’s life while he wore them, see their joy and pain, their hopes and fears.  What a great vehicle, I thought.  I imaged myself putting on Kathy’s glasses, and realized how hard it would be to write that book.  I’m not only nearsighted, I’m me-sighted.  I can’t begin to imagine what another person sees and feels.  Or maybe that degree of empathy is so difficult; the very idea of it exhausts me. 

This paucity of empathy struck me then, and strikes me now.  Could I write a chapter of a novel in which I put on Kathy’s glasses and feel her feelings, see her world?  What about my grandfather’s?  What about picking up a random pair from a lost-and-found and seeing as some stranger, who had capsized his kayak too.  I think it would make a great book, a quiet, monastic person coming to understand how little he knows of the lives of others, even those he loves.  It would take a hack of a writer; it would take a heck of a human.