Worry

Part 1

For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, my soul knows very well. 
Psalms 139:13, 14 NKJV

“Worried to death,” says my tombstone. And boy, am I glad I saw that coming before it became a reality!

I was a part-time nursery teacher at a private preschool for rich kids. Fresh out of college and working my way through a Special Education master's degree, I was more terrified than confident in the workplace, especially of my superiors. The directress, religious and strict, fit the part of the stereotypical spinster in the movies. 

One day, on my way to the kitchen, she confronted me.

“I was observing you with the children and noticed your eyesight is fading. The board is wary about criticism from parents, so we’ll have to let you go. You have two weeks.” she said sternly.

I might have turned pale and white, for the spinster fled to the kitchen like she saw a ghost when she noticed my reaction.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I developed ulcers while waiting for my termination. Laboring through sleepless nights, irregular meals, and consuming worry gave birth to indigestion, nausea and vomiting, severe abdominal pains, dizziness, and absolute weakness. I hung out regularly at the emergency room enough to get a Miss Friendship award among the healthcare workers. I’ll never forget what the doctor said, “You ate worry, now it’s eating you.”

The doctor was right. I did eat worry because I had nothing else to eat that’s pleasurable. How could I enjoy food when I lose my job and not land another? What about my future? My career? Could I sustain my master’s education? What would my friends and family think? Would I ever have a family? I fed my mind questions that could not be processed. The wheels of my mind turned endlessly, like a never ending teacup ride at the fair. I was stuck, worrying about why I wasn’t worrying for the real reason – my visual impairment!

The spinster detonated worry and anxiety. Not only was my vision fading, but most likely my chance to enjoy life. Exit Tina who was trying to leverage visual impairment, and enter the down and out bum.

You see, the severe and rare eye condition Aniridia (undeveloped iris) chose my family. Only one out of every 100,000 children have the same condition worldwide. We’re five children, and four of us don’t have irises. My only sighted brother has irises, and they were big, beautiful, stunning eyes. What a discriminative ailment! I mean, my sighted brother’s irises could be enough for all of us if “sharing is caring” applied to all situations. Big-name ophthalmologists welcomed us into their clinics as interesting test subjects, often more like guinea pigs, with the rare disease. One by one, we’d seat ourselves facing a torture instrument called a “tonometer” (a device that measures eye pressure). 

The victim sets his face on a chin rest. The probe is inserted into the eye, and the familiar blue light searches for the missing iris, like those flashing lights used by police in a car chase. Most eye experts teach in medical universities. Unfortunately, my siblings and I ended up as their subjects. One by one, ophthalmology interns and students took turns probing our eyes while our faces contorted to hold our eyes open. On one occasion, I had to keep my eyes open for too many students that my ocular muscles forgot how to close them. That night, I felt like I slept with eyes still wide open, and my world appeared laser blue for three days. I feared seeing the doctors so much that I promised my mom I’d eat carrots, the vegetable I abhor, if only she wouldn’t take me to the ophthalmologist. Her refusal proved that I needed to work on my bargaining skills.

Medical expertise and the intelligence of the numerous heads that examined us regularly couldn’t figure out how we could see. To the ophthalmology community, this was a time when an apparent miracle thwarted scientific facts. In my simple mind, despite the eye anatomy, I figured we gather visual information differently. Extremely nearsighted, we would bring our faces close to things we look at, sometimes to the point of kissing them. To see, I’ve unintentionally kissed random stuff; small print book pages, newspapers, appliances while reading knob labels, a dead rat, my classmate who was showing a small mole on her face, etc. Aniridia made us look weird, but being born with the condition, we just had to roll with it.

We felt comfortable in the family because Aniridics comprised the majority. My sighted brother and parents had to adjust to the near-sighted world instead of the other way around. This was our family’s version of “reverse inclusion,” the paradigm that taught me to leverage exceptionalities.

Mainstreaming was unheard of at that time, so school became the cradle of coping mechanisms, aka “charm my way through.” With the boys turned off by my eyes, I learned how to flirt using my wit, humor, voice, and personality. Need I say more?

In general, my top-secret formula for being accepted was to like people and be likable. This worked perfectly with the young children I taught. I demonstrated how it’s cool to do things differently, the non-traditional way. And they understood— for the most part. In fact, some kids tried sticking their faces into a book to imitate how I read. I had to tell them the method was not for everybody. My students understood they can always try different ways of doing things and stick to what works best. 

Partnerships with parents resulted in several breakthroughs. Children diagnosed with autism— an old school classification or whatever label the medical field slapped onto them— started to communicate verbally, socialize, read, or write. Rewards for good behavior motivated kids to act their best. There was never a bored child in my classroom. We all learned together while having fun. Many times, the spinster caught me on my fours playing with the kids, and she disapproved of it. But I did worse. We rolled on the floor, finger-painted our faces, sang nursery rhymes to different tunes, invented games and so on. My students and I were tight! They liked me, and I loved them. 

And, I was losing my job and my beloved children.

(To be continued)