When I was 9 years old I started to have headaches.

This was in Chula Vista, and I was in the fifth grade. It wasn’t about school. I had an excellent teacher and enjoyed school that year. There was no family upheaval. I had no particular social problems. But with alarming frequency my head hurt so much I complained about it, and I remember my mother being concerned enough that she did a notable thing; she took my head into her lap and tried to soothe me. My mother is a remarkable high-energy woman, but soothing is not a word anyone would use to describe her.

The headaches continued until my parents took me to an eye doctor. He quickly determined the extent of the myopia and astigmatism, and he wrote the prescription for corrective lenses.

My parents were surprisingly surprised. I mean, they both wore glasses. They were each nearsighted and astigmatic. But I was their first kid, and they didn’t expect a problem so early. After all, Mom didn’t need glasses till she was a teenager, and she always suspected it was because her older sister, then a counselor, made her swim at summer camp when Mom had an undiagnosed but light case of the measles. And I’m not sure when Dad started wearing glasses, but I know he tried to cure his eyes with special exercises when he was in the Army Air Corps. He wanted to be a pilot, and that required good vision. He improved to the point that he thought he could get along without his glasses just fine then, but not fine enough for the higher-ups to let him pilot a plane.

Those headaches were from eye strain. I’ll never forget the day we picked up my glasses. We got in the car after they were adjusted on my face and we started for home. Driving away from the doctors, cruising up that first major street, I looked out the passenger window (children were allowed then to ride next to the driver). I was awed and fascinated by the appearance of knot holes in a redwood fence around a house we passed. I had seen that fence forever. But I’d never before been able to perceive its details. I was beyond happy, seeing well.

(And yes, the headaches ceased. I didn’t get them again till I was middle-aged, over-stressed, and clenching my jaw when I slept).