My Crossed Eye

Me and my son Alex in 2014

I grew up with one crossed eye. My parents sent me for surgery at the age of five to fix it, and it lasted about a minute. I remember being in the hospital and having a deep feeling of sadness after finding out the doctor wouldn't allow my mother to visit me because she had gotten a cold. So, my father came to the hospital and brought me to the playroom, where a clown attempted to cheer me up. Yes, a clown. A creepy one. I needed my mom. 

I was the freaky, cross-eyed kid who made others uncomfortable because they didn't know where to look. I remember being at an event, almost like a team-building type thing, when I was in the Brownies, a prerequisite group for The Girl Scouts. My mom dropped me off with a patch on one eye - not a cool-looking pirate patch, but a big round beige-colored band-aid - one of the interventions used to straighten my eye. The theory is to cover the straight eye to force the other eye to use the muscles, thereby strengthening and straightening the bad eye. That didn't work. Anyway, the team building exercise was to pair up (I was the only one without a partner), so I was instructed to randomly pop into the other groups of two. We all had some kind of a bat - a soft one that could not cause physical harm. I probably would have preferred a few stitches or a concussion rather than the humiliation I felt that day. My question is, "Who were the adults in the room, and how did they not see that this game would not be appropriate for a girl with one eye? How about some inclusivity? Not a chance - no such thing in the 70s. I had to suck it up, buttercup. 

Being cross-eyed throughout my life left my self-esteem in the deficient category. I avoided cameras and tried to overcompensate by working hard on my personality, trying to be the life of the party, and prioritizing the comfort of others over myself because I knew it was challenging for them to know where to look. Throughout my life, there were countless times when I would be speaking with someone, and they would turn around to look over their shoulder because they didn't know I was speaking to them. So, then I would say something like, "I'm speaking to you," and they would turn around again, point to themselves, and say, "Who me?"

Every eye doctor I visited told me the same thing when I became an adult. "It's too late for surgery because it would mess up my neurological system." At 47, I found a doctor who said yes. What about the whole neurological system thing? He told me my brain would adapt. I got into my car and called my fiancé, now husband Marty, but as soon as I opened my mouth to tell him, I burst into tears of joy, and the words couldn't come out. I ended up having the surgery three weeks before our wedding. I am forever grateful to this surgeon who changed my life in an insanely profound way - allowing me to take more chances in life, increase my confidence, and accomplish things I never thought I could. 

Wedding Day 2015