I have a perfectly functional pair of reading glasses but, when I bought an e-reader, my need for them almost disappeared as the device enabled me to enlarge the font to whatever size was comfortable for me. So what if one single sentence without any commas would take up the whole screen? It was still preferable to wasting my time searching for my glasses instead of reading. My reading glasses have been somewhat beaten up anyway since the day I sat on them, but it was nothing a bit of Scotch Tape couldn’t fix. I did not really worry about the way they looked, because I use them so rarely. Using the computer, however, was another thing. With that I needed to move my face uncomfortably close to the screen.
There were two defining moments when I realized that I needed another pair of glasses solely for the computer. The first had to do with emoji selection. To save time, most people use emojis in digital communication. The emoji I frequently use to convey that I am ok with whatever the other person messaged about is a yellow dog with his paw showing the OK sign. One sunny afternoon, after I received a message about some work issue from Dinara, my sweet co-teacher, I decided to spruce things up. Instead of my trusted dog, I clicked on a new emoji. To my myopic eyes the mauve figure looked quite relaxed, reclining on green and yellow cushions. One click, and off the figure went as a sign of my approval to Dinara’s earlier message. Five minutes later I received a frantic reply, ‘Ms. Zora. Is everything ok? Did I say something to upset you?’ A closer inspection of the emoji that I had so carelessly picked, this time with my glasses on and my face sticking to the screen, revealed that the mauve representative of my feelings was impatiently tapping her fingers on the yellow cushion, sending an unmistakable message, ‘I’ve had just about enough of this nonsense.’
I remember precisely the second occasion when I realized just how badly I needed computer glasses. It was a Friday afternoon, and we were all sitting in the Conference room, being subjected to one of those interminably long meetings that resolve nothing. Quite often, big parts are carried out in Uzbek and that is a perfect opportunity to play my favorite game ‘Four Pics One Word’ on my phone. This simple game displays four different pics and it’s up to the player to decide what the common related word is. On that particular afternoon, one of the pics displayed slices of prosciutto. I leaned towards Dave covertly showing him the pics. “I don’t get it, how is the prosciutto connected to the rest of the pics?” Dave put on his thoughtful look as if he was pondering the scintillating graph gracing the big screen in the room, examined my phone display and without missing a beat said, “What prosciutto? Those are bricks.”
The health-care system in Uzbekistan is free of charge and quite sufficient for standard uncomplicated procedures, but I’d rather not have triple bypass surgery here. My search for that perfect pair of computer glasses began at one of the two state-run hospitals in Nukus. I went prepared. After I was ushered into a room with an eye chart and two kind-looking women I pulled out my computer and communicated the problem. I needed glasses specifically for the computer. Of course, they still ran the test using their ancient Cyrillic alphabet wall chart. That part was fairly straightforward, and I ended up clutching a prescription for a pair of glasses that I apparently needed for distance. In my mind I had already resolved to disregard this prescription. Do I really need to see from a distance that the person down the road transports freshly baked bread in her baby carriage as opposed to a baby? After all, the distinction would become apparent the moment she passed me. There would be no surprises left, no mysteries left. I would know when I got to it. I would miss the relief and the joy of discovering that the dead crow on the sidewalk was in fact a black plastic bag.
Satisfying my need for computer glasses proved much harder. After an exhaustive tryout of different lens combinations while peering at my computer screen I almost gave up. “Another eye hospital in Nukus. Try,” said the examiner who, by that time, had to be as frustrated as me by our lack of progress, and so recommended the competition in her halting English.
The second hospital with the telling name ‘Eye Hospital’ turned out to be private. It became apparent that this was not a charitable institution the moment I walked into the lobby and the most prominent things impossible to miss, even by heavily myopic clients, were two window counters proclaiming, ‘Cashier.’
Despite the fact that this was not a state institution, the typical Uzbek inefficiencies were apparent even here. “Go Room One,” I was told after I had paid upfront. Room One, which seemed recently painted in beige, boasted several small plants on the windowsill and two underemployed women servicing one machine. The second room was a repetition of the first one in a different color; the walls were light yellow. The machine in the second room that puffed into my eyes obviously measured something else than the beige room machine, but the two women looked just as underutilized. Finally, I entered a third room with an optometrist, a woman with a face like a winter apple, who examined all the documents I had accumulated in the previous rooms and then proceeded to give me a good old fashion run of the alphabet posted on the wall. Afterward, we got into the real business of trying different lenses. When it was the time to write a prescription, she pulled out a small bottle of ink and a real old-fashioned pen, which she proceeded to dip into the ink. She grinned, “Yes, I know, but I really like writing with it. I can’t write with these,” and she disdainfully shoved aside a regular dime-a-dozen pen. That gesture reminded me of our mom; another woman with a strong mind of her own.
A memory suddenly came to me from nowhere. Mom had started complaining about her deteriorating sight when she was in her seventies. After several tests, the official diagnosis came … an inoperable cataract. But Dadu and I came up with our own private diagnosis … ‘selective vision.’ “Are you planning to wear that blouse?” mom would ask. “Yes. Why?” “What about that dirty spot there?” She pointed to a smudge that had gone unnoticed by everybody else. “How can you possibly see that?” “Well, I can,” was her cryptic answer. Our mom had the power to entertain and exasperate us at the same time. Stubbornness was her trademark, and this had only increased as she aged.
After mom had suffered several night falls, we asked the attendants at the assisted living pension where she had been living at that time to start putting up a low barrier on her bedside. “Sorry. We can’t do that without her permission. And she won’t give it,” was the response from the personnel.
“At least there she has people checking on her throughout the night, and the hospital is only a stone’s throw away if she gets hurt,” I said to Dadu. “But what are we going to do when she is with us?” I was thinking about our annual get-togethers in our little village house. Mom adored the place and would never willingly forgo spending time there with us. She loved all the entertainment, people visiting, all the attention she would bask in. “We’ll have to tell her that, while in the village, she will have to wake one of us up if she wants to visit the loo. It’s too dangerous and we can’t take the chance of her falling. Surely she will understand.”
“Do you think I am senile? No. Absolutely NOT. No, no.” She stomped her little foot when asked to call or use a cute bell we obligingly provided if she wanted to leave the bed in the middle of the night. She was fiercely independent, our mom. She would have none of it.
“Please, wake me up. I don’t mind at all. I will help you go to the washroom. Please, don’t try to go on your own. Just imagine if you fall and break something. You don’t want that. We don’t want that. Don’t be so selfish,” Dadu pleaded with her one last time before going to bed. But to no avail. In the morning we would discover to our chagrin some tell-tale signs that mom had ignored our pleas. Using the flashlight, she had somehow shuffled to the washroom over several treacherous doorsteps. “Please, mom, don’t do that. You were lucky this time,” I weighed in. “You worry too much,” was her answer.
Another night would roll in and out with the same result. “We need to do something,” Dadu concluded. My brilliant plan was to string a few metal potlids between two chairs alongside mom’s bed. The idea was simple. “Mom is crafty, but no Houdini. She will touch one of the lids and the clinking sound will wake one of us up,” I explained the plan to Dadu. Of course, we could not tell mom. And that’s how I found myself creeping into her room using all my ninja skills with the potlids already attached to a string. “Don’t let it clink,” was Dadu’s last advice before I disappeared into the darkness of mom’s room. Of course, it never occurred to me, I remember thinking as I was inching towards mom’s bed. It was not easy, but I did it. Our new alarm system was now strung between two chairs that were supposed to prevent mom from falling off her bed. It worked. The tricky part was getting up before mom to remove the contraptions. That part fell to Dadu, who is generally an earlier riser than me.
My trip down Memory Lane was interrupted. “How is that?” The quill-fond optometrist enquired. “Good,” I replied happy that we finally found the Goldilocks combination of lenses. She sighed audibly in relief and wielded her quaint pen once more to write something on a piece of paper. “This is a good store. Go there for the glasses.” She handed it to me and smiled warmly. Probably delighted to see me go.
At the shop I rummaged through my purse and pulled out two prescriptions; one for the computer and the other for distance. I stared at the indecipherable Russian hieroglyphs. Which one was which? “How much is a pair of new glasses?” I randomly picked one of the two and handed it to the shop assistant. Roughly $25 was his answer. I handed him the other prescription as well, “Ok, I will have one of each please.”
A week after acquiring the two new pairs of glasses, while watching TV, it occurred to me that I could test my new distance glasses. “I can’t believe this,” I exclaimed to Dave. The new screen clarity almost floored me. “I just got myself a brand-new TV. With much higher resolution! And it only cost me $25. Amazing!”