Max ran alongside the thick hedge, a few prickly edges of leafy trimmed branches catching at his skin and clothes as he flew by, tearing a bit of his rocket T-shirt, the one his father brought from a NASA visit. The problem was, this part of the yard was too narrow to charge through. Plus, it was often where the cat nestled as she believed the shady part was her kingdom. Since their fluffy black and white Trixie didn’t welcome others there, he avoided it and saved himself from her propulsive leap and blood drawing scratch. Yet to his surprise, Trixie was apparently out and about a moment. He kept on running, sweat slicking his neck. It was a day to climb things or cruise on his skateboard or run fast, the sun blazing and a good breeze ruffling his longish auburn hair. He would worry about the tear later.

The other side of the house was “a lovely space under development”, as his mother told all who asked. It was an “old and dignified home”, he was told every time he said it was ancient. She’d had French doors put in and soon there’d be a deck off the breakfast room. His father asked why it was necessay since they already had a dining room plus breakfast room plus a back patio but she said the breakfast room was only a nook and, anyway, she wanted more attractive room outdoors.

His father said under his breath, “I think the eight year old pricey patio provides all the necessary fresh air.”

“Why on earth do you say such things?” his mother said. “You’re a scientist, aren’t you? You know we need daily and more healthy engagement with nature, right?”

Max would have found them hilarious if they didn’t argue about the development going on and other things. His father worked in a research lab related to space travel and he loved that. But he was not such a big outdoors guy like some fathers. As for his mother: for Max there was already so much room outdoors that it never ended. So far. Luckily.

As he neared the end of the boxwood hedge where the sidewwalk began, he realized his vision was more than a little off. He blinked a few times and still saw little of what came at him, only blurry shapes and faint colors. He felt about his face and came to a full stop. His glasses were gone. He stooped over and began to hunt around his feet, hands patting the grass inch by inch. Max would not ask for help if at all possible.

This was not a new problem. His parents often told him he absolutely must wear the sports eyeglasses strap daily now that he was in more sports. They meant he was running some fast races, skateboarding well, cycling for several miles and fooling around successfully with basketball. It was clear he had athletic ability even at age ten. Max was quick, strong and deft at most physical challenges, despite the inconvenience of wearing glasses. Swimming was an issue but he still enjoyed any kind of water. A goal before summer was to get them to buy him prescription goggles; they had a grabby strap but it’d be worth it. He had even saved money from chores, birthday and Christmas to help lower their costs and resistance. His mother worried he’d dive in recklessly and crack his skull.

He’d do alot more if they’d cheer him on more. But there was the problem with not seeing well. ,Myopia, he was told in second grade like it was a disease. It was true he couldn’t see the chalk board from his seat well enough to not seem brainless. Even though he was moved to front row. He hated having glasses, but after a few days was amazed to be able to see each tiny spring maple and birch leaf. He could easily tell when his jeans and shirts needed washing. He saw the whiskers on Trixie from a few feet away. He could spot his friends by facial recognition at least a half block away. He felt more safe, so began to be more active with “even a bit of a daredevil coming out” Grandpa said, slapping him on the back. They played tennis, but that could be fun in a way. As long as the ball didn’t hit his glasses or they flew off.

The world was revealed that first full-sighted spring in happy spasms of surprise. Max not only adjusted–even to teasing he got from a couple kids; “four eyes” they yelled–but he felt almost at home in them. They were his key to enjoying each day, more than he’d imagined.

But he didn’t like that strap on the back of his head. It made his scalp itchy and it always slipped about so he’d have to stop to adjust it again and again. And it squashed his hair, dented it by end of day, which lately bothered him when he checked in the mirror–he liked his thick hair. It got nicer every year and he was shooting up already; soon he’d be eleven. He would not wear the strap, at least not until he found one he liked more.

Max was down on the ground in a crawl, searching with strict attention. It was hard to find glasses when you couldn’t see farther than 6 inches in front of you on a good day with bright light. If his father came out front he’d be in for it. After all, Max simply had to use common sense–he also wore glasses and his glasses strap was never removed except to replace it.

He was halfway back down the hedge row, now closing in on Trixie who had returned to her spot, when he heard his name called. He ignored it; it was Mrs. Jamison from next door. Not that she would an issue of what happened. He liked her. But she would detain him with talk.

“What are you up to, Max? That is Max, isn’t it? Or is that Joseph? My, how tall you seem. Can I help you at all? Are you alright, son?”

He lifted a hand, gave a quick sidways wave– she’d soon be on her way. It wasn’t that he didn’t like to chat sometimes. She was just…pretty old.

“Too damned talkative!” his father had noted after a fifteen minute conversation with her as he would try to get the front lawn mowed. It was a job he didn’t like and which Max often completed. “She speaks in circles and layers and insignificant details, as if I’d asked for a book plus prologue and epilogue.” But he admitted she was a very good neighbor.

Max’s knee met something sharp. He let out a yelp and sat back. No blood oozing into his jeans. Maybe a little thorn from a dead rose bush he’d hauled away from the back garden. He was about to get back to crawling and patting the grass when two grayed-white old fashioned tennis shoes took over his view.

“It’s your glasses, ay? Fell off again? I know how that is, believe me, glasses can be a big pain to keep track of, but that’s how it goes.”

“Yeah…it does.” Max kept crawling along the hedge and grassy area, and knew she’d come along, too. He was used to her ways, having lived next door all his life.

Mrs. Jamison bent over, head moving to and fro, her reddened eyes scanning rapidly. Rather weakly, of course; her own eyesight was more limited than she admitted to anyone. But she also had a knack for searching out lost things. It was a life skill that began when she was 12, so there had been many decades of being patient as she searched, intuiting hiding spots of this and that. But so far, she wasn’t getting much of an idea where Max’s glasses had lept.

They advanced until close to Trixie who rushed to greet her, then rubbed her head against Mrs. Jamison’s shin and meowed. Max never understood what they had in common, but Trixie visited the lady often, rounding the hedge quietly and with purpose, then returning in a couple hours.

Mrs. Jamison ran her palm over Trixie’s head, back and tail, then resumed efforts alongside Max.

“I had them on as I passed Trixie,” he explained. “They have to be closer to the end of the hedge, by the sidewalk.”

“Well, let’s track them down, shall we? Though you know they may have flipped and gotten stuck in the hedge or ended up in my flowers– newly planted. There are other spots they might grab onto.”

“That occurred to me, too. How will we figure that out since neither of us have great eyes?”
“To put it mildly…” Mrs. Jamison said, smoothing lines of consternation from her forehead. “You know, you might ask your mom to help. I can tell she’s in the kitchen as there is a faint scent of scorched…muffins? Cookies? She’d find them in a jiffy.”

“Walnut cranberry muffins, well done,” he smirked. “Yeah, but then I’d get a lecture again.”

“Well, she has perfect vision, poor dear. We all have deficits.”

Max looked up at her. Was she getting loony? His mother was lucky!

“I see your disagreement, Max, but the truth is there are advantages to not seeing everything easily or perfectly–in not having vision like just anyone.”

She did have her way with words but he ignored that and kept on feeling around for the black plastic frames of glasses, his magic connection to the kingdom of everyday life. It made him nervous when he lost them. It made him feel weak when he couldn’t see. It sometimes scared him when he got up in deepest night and saw nothing but nothingness, not one sure edge of anything unless the moor was full. But he was not about to admit that to anyone, not even Grant, his best friend.

His hands prickled, his eyes itched, nose was a bit fussy. He’d long had an allergy to grasses until he got allergy shots. He was not about to lose more opportunities to live outside as much as he could. But allergies still could interfere, like losing glasses. There was nothing to be found, it seemed, of his artificial eyes. He sighed and stood up straight, stretching hugely. He required a good stretch many times a day.

“You keep growing so fast, you’ll one day fall right over from the sheer height of you!’
Max chortled. “Mrs. J, you’re funny sometimes. But yeah, I feel kind of tall. Better to shoot hoops!”

“Right!” she beamed. “Now let’s take a break. You come sit on my porch with Trixie and me a bit and we’ll strategize.”

Max saw Trixie padding in the direction of her house. Mrs. Jamison followed.

“Okay. My eyes hurt from squinting and itch from being on the grass. I’m thirsty, too.” He walked gingerly, each step like a step into nowhere-land.

“Iced tea with lemonade coming up,” she said as they moved up her sidewalk. She disappeared indoors as he sank into a chair on her porch.

Max tried to survey the hazy, undescribable street, then closed his eyes. It was enough to make him long for bed and sleep when he couldn’t see much. It was disorienting despite having lived on the same street for 10 years. How could he continue to put off using the stupid strap that lay in his bottom desk drawer?

“Here you go.” She handed him a beaded glass of sweet and tart liquid, then put on the floor a little dish of milk for Trixie. Then she sat in her rocker and rocked slightly, her peaceful face upturned to the warmth. “What happened today?”

Max looked her way and saw her eyes were closed–he thought. “Same old thing. I got going and they slipped off. I was running from the patio to the front and realized in a few steps they were gone.” He slurped a long draught of the tart drink.”Sometimes it seems they don’t want to be on my face.” He gave a little laugh. “It’s not like I can help it, though.”

“How many pair of glasses have you had the last few years?”

He thought that over. “Maybe three? Four?”

“So, perhaps one pair a year.” She looked over at him but he was looking at his hands, Or nothing. “Kind of pricey, right?”

He’d heard that before, too often. “Yeah. I tried the straps–tried lots–but can’t seem to find the right one.”

“It just takes getting used to. A small thing when you think it over.”

“Well, you can say that but you’re…” his voice faded away. He felt embrarrassed that he was rude. Well, she was pretty old, no getting around it.

“I’m not ten. But at your age I could still see. It was only after an accident at 12 that I couldn’t see right.”

“Oh. I didn’t know.”

“Of course not, that’s ancient history. And I don’t go telling just anybody. Right now I feel like telling you. I grew up in Minnesota. Winters were snowy and icy. It got treacherous outside. A bad thing happened one night. My optical nerves were damaged when my face and head got hit hard in a car accident. What a mess! One eye lost vision entirely awhile but I got treatments galore. Years of those. I won’t bore you with the misery of it. My left eye was spared most horrors and it sees pretty well with glasses, but my right one is still not the best after all the doctors. And money spent. Anyway, if I do lose my glasses, I’m in a sad fix. I always wear a pretty chain attached to hang onto them in case they fall off. And if they are taken off, I forget where I put them sometimes.” She shrugged.

“Guess I never noticed–the glasses thingie. It’s just what you wear.” Max sipped his drink and stole a glance at the pretty chain. He could barely make out what it was, maybe pearls looking like dangly earrings as they hung from the bows. And her face–it seemed okay to him. “So…I guess it was hard when you were a kid. I mean, more than hard, right?”

“I was almost a teenager. Those years were lost to medical issues. I needed cosmetic surgeries, too–fixed my nose, a cheekbone, forehead scarring. How could it be any worse, I thought. But I got on with it as best I could. I’m not a quitter.” She looked at him. “You aren’t either.”

Max’s body shimmered with the shock of her story. When she was just a little older than he was! He shifted and turned to face her. “That sounds awful! I’ve never had any real bad times. I mean, glasses can get in the way of sports and I want to be a really good athlete but people go for it, anyway. But I just have to use the strap, I suppose.”

“You don’t like how it looks and feels, ay? Makes you feel a bit more conspicuous? Even famous athletes wear glasses and use them, right? So you surely can. Believe me, there will be worse things.”

“And who cares, I guess. I’d rather not go through this every time they fall off and maybe break. Mrs. J., I can’t even tell what house that is across from us and I do know it, I just can’t remember the colors, can’t see its shape. It feels pretty strange.” He rubbed his eyes. “Terrible not seeing stuff.”

Mrs. Jamison rocked a few minutes, silent.

Max cleared his throat. “So, that must be what it was like, only alot worse after your accident.”

“Something like that. Lots of darkness, all kinds of darkness, Max.” She pursed her lips and frowned. “The thing is, you can get used to anything. I felt scared at times, sure, but then I realized I had other senses and if I never saw well again I’d figure things out. By sensing things- hearing, smelling and tasting, touching. Paying attention. I got good at it. Figuring things out by being super aware. I called it using my naked eye, a way of seeing that came out of need. I had real eyes, but this other help that gave more information.” She laughed. “My friends used to call me Batty–like a bat– because I was fast on my feet, smart and had a kind of radar about things. People, places.”

She paused to squint at him–he was hanging onto her words–and continued. “Well, maybe ‘batty’ meant I was a bit nutty, too. But I had to learn to live all over again in many ways. I was thankful to make it through. Here I am, still, ay?”

“Huh, it’s weird but kinda cool. I guess I’m lucky to just have near sightedeness.”

“Perhaps. Have you tried to do things without your glasses? You might be surprised what you learn by having to use other senses more to find your way around. The thing is, uncluttered vision can make you smarter about what you see. It’s like this: when we see super well, we see so much, and extra things that aren’t necessary at the moment. Sometimes we miss what we need to see most. The naked eye can also be simply our unrepaired eye–the one or ones that are unchnaged and so are not distracted. We see our own special view of things. We see more honestly.”

She stopped rocking and talking as if she knew she had gone on too long. Trixie had made herself at home on her lap, her bright eyes firmly shut.

Max heard her words and he thought he got it but she had gone pretty deep. It was a lot to take in, as his mother said after talking with her awhile. But Mrs. J. was different than most grown ups; she thought he’d understand more ideas and experiences; his thoughts mattered, too. He didn’t always get her meaning, but he tried more than he did with other adults.

He stood, stretched and listed to one side. “Not really. You can see that I don’t feel great without seeing great. I feel off balance, too.”

“Yes, but that improves with practice with use of that naked eye and your burred vision. The inner ear adjusts. Your body wants to be whole, well and balanced.”

He felt a little awkward thinking so much about his body and thinking about it with her nearby. A bit lost in her words. In her story. And yet he got what mattered to him and he even believed her. He perched on a foot stool and watched Trixie clean her paws thoroughly.

The two of them, Trixie and Max, had been neighbors of Mrs. Betty Jamison all their lives. She’d watch him an hour after school off and on when his mother couldn’t get home on time from her job or his parents went out. They chatted on the street if they saw each other. They’d shared good BBQs in both back yards. He’d always liked being at her house; he was a kid then, never thought one way or another about her. Her husband had died a couple of years back; he was a heavy man who spoke with a pipe stuck in the side of his mouth and had a big laugh. Max missed his good natured manner. The Jamisons seemed good together and Max found their house peaceful. Unlike his, sometimes.

“Can you see okay these days?” Max asked her suddenly. Maybe she was going blind. She had talked so much about her poor sight and she was getting older every year. It suddenly worried him. And maybe she was warning him to take care of his eyes.

She smiled. Sure, well enough.” She tapped his arm with knobby fingers to emphasize. “Time starts to impair sight, as we know. But I manage fine. I keep practicing with–“

“-your weird naked eye plus two decent real eyes, right?” He wanted to move past the idea of her not seeing life go on as usual. Did it come to that and worse?

Laughing softly, she shook her head but of course she agreed. “It’s more like…without the advantage of glasses you can manage to find your way fine, usually. Without ordinary sight you have new experiences in the world, Max. Different ways of being.” She looked right at him though she wasn’t clear what he saw in return. “Okay, enough of that!” She scooped up Trixie, snuggled her, set her free. “Let’s get your glasses.”

He made his way down the steps more slowly than she did, and was surprised when she made a quick turn in her own yard.

“I have a feeling…” she said, then walked over to her side of the hedge. She exmained large areas with him following and feeling lame. She stopped. “Come closer.”

Max peered with nose almost touching the dense boxwood hedge.

“Too close, stand back where I am.”

His eyes roamed, narrowing to better focus on the mass of dark greenery. Nothing. He scanned the top of the hedge; it was five feet high. A cloud scudded by and the light changed and there was a sudden bright spot on the greenery. Light bouncing off something shiny–his lenses. He reached up to tug the bows, releasing them from the hedge’s hold.

“Eureka!” Mrs. Jamison said.

The relief he felt was so strong he about wilted as he checked them out with with careful fingers, holding them very close. They looked fine so he put them on, settled them at each ear. Instantly everything took on identifiable, reasurring form. There appeared a little scratch and smudge on one lens and he saw they needed fixing but oh, how glad he was to have his “eyes” back. They again allowed him greater purchase on earth’s surface, a steadier hold on his mind. He took a deep breath, let out a downward cascade of whistling.

Mrs. Jamison patted him on the back with a light touch and went to her porch.

“Wait, he said. “Mrs. J., thanks alot for helping me! You figured it out. I didn’t expect them on more on this side, on top.” He removed them, cleaned the lenses with the tail of his T-shirt and them put them back on. They’d be fine.

“You get those cleaned up better– and wear the strap every day,” she advised sternly. “The last thing you need is to have them fly off when you’re in a basketball tournament or out skateboarding like a wild man. Not a good look, you fumbling about or smashed on the concrete.”

He laughed and waved to her. He resumed his run again. Then he abruptly stopped, walked back to stand at the end of her walkway.

“Any chance we can keep this to oursleves? Mom and Dad…”

“Count on me, Max.” She made a motion of locking pressed lips and tossing the key.

Max picked up speed again. What a nice lady she was to help him out. All those years she was a good caretaker of others. And that naked eye idea of finding your way even when nothing was easy to find–he might just try it. See what happened, get back to her, just hang out a few with her on her porch sometimes.