On eyeglasses and nose studs

In a few minutes, I am going to my eye doctor to switch from glasses--which I do not need to wear all the time, but do because I like them--to contacts.

I have had contacts before. I didn't stick with them because they are complicated, requiring solutions and cases and time for taking them in and out. Glasses slip on and off. Need washing now and then. And I like them--they are familiar, and surrounded as I am by smart and nerdy people in my family and working life, my glasses fit right in.

I have loved my glasses and my glasses have loved me, but Moriah and my glasses are not on good terms. She is probably in an extended two- or three-year-old stage, here at nearly age 5. And this means lots of tantrums and defiance, a ongoing battle for her independence and at the same time, her security ("Does mom REALLY mean what she says?"). Stubborness can be a trait of Down syndrome, as can oppositional behavior; for Moriah, this is complicated and fueled by her speech delay and auditory processing issues, which hinder her from saying what she wants to say and understanding what others say to her. The last couple months have been particularly difficult--a lot of yelling, some kicking, tons of hitting, spitting...and, just so we are clear, I am describing Moriah here, not me. I mostly end up injured and crying.

And my eyeglasses have often been caught in the crosshairs.

In December, during her freak out in my mother's bathroom, Moriah knocked my glasses off so violently that they wretched my nose stud out of my nose. Both the glasses and the stud went flying, my nose was inflamed, I couldn't find the stud on the floor, and hours later when I got home to a new stud, it wouldn't go in.

I should stop here and explain how much I love nose studs. I know for some folks nose studs look rebellious; my associations with nose studs are international, having seen women around the world in many cultures wear them gorgeously. I had a nose stud many years ago, and then did not, and last year for Mother's Day I decided--a rather obvious symbolic act of reclaiming the travel-throughout-the-world, independent, much younger person I used to be--to re-pierce it. Losing that stud to Moriah's tantrum was so painful--and not physically so, though it was that too, but symbolically so--that I haven't told many folks where it went. It was as if she had wretched from me my rather silly but significant-to-me attempt to connect to my former self, to make some metaphorical peace with how different my life is from all I expected in my twenties.

In the last week, Moriah has clobbered me so many times on the face--last week, sending my glasses flying down the school bus steps, because I had climbed on to get her off when she refused to leave her bus seat--that I have had headaches and bruises behind my eye wear. And so I have made an appointment today, to become a contact lens wearer.

Sometimes I think, when I post happy photos of Moriah on Facebook, that I am misleading folks. Life with Moriah has been hard--particularly hard lately. Yesterday I wrote on Facebook a caption for this photo, below, taken when we visited the horse farm yesterday morning: "Her hugs are my daily calls to meditation, to love, to meaning.

I am so very proud to be loved by a girl with Down syndrome, if only to know such highs and lows of living and loving." I wrote it because the quiet, tender, affectionate moment we shared in that photo is different than how many other moments in a day with Moriah can be (just two hours before the photo, I was cleaning her spit off my eyeglass lenses). I wrote it because I cherish those kind, gentle, tender moments--cherish and honor them because they are not the only way I experience Moriah, and because I am learning to love and accept and weather with her all of her moments.

Life with Moriah is just this way--sometimes painful, sometimes awful, sometimes glorious, sometimes so full of love my heart could burst. She has taken from me--a nose stud and a pair of eyeglasses and many other pretenses of my ego and former self. But I can tell I'm learning how to grieve better, how to accept her and this life better. Here's how I know: when I lost my nose stud, the pain was so cutting I kept it to myself.

Today I'm losing my glasses, and the pain is not cutting, but instructive, and I had to tell you so. Today I know: in losing, I surrender again to the life only I can live.