Antelope Island
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost
Son #1 was born with amblyopia—lazy eye. That meant that his left eye didn’t track with his right. Because the right eye was stronger, it took on the vision for both eyes. Without intervention, the left eye would eventually cease to function altogether. His pediatrician recommended a patch over the right eye to strengthen the left eye and encourage it to work harder.
Actually, the hard work turned out to be done by my husband and I. Son #1 was three. He didn’t like the patch. Every time we turned our backs, he ripped it off. I found used patches under his bed, behind the garbage can, clinging to the blinds next to the couch, etc. Finally, the doc prescribed a fancy set of glasses which had a prism in the right lens, forcing Son #1 to use the left eye. One day when I wasn’t looking, he threw those very expensive glasses into a snowbank behind the house. We found them after the spring thaw.
Finally, at age five, surgery on the left eye was necessary, and Son #1 could now wear specialized regular prescription glasses. He didn’t like them either. He was always taking them off and leaving them somewhere. The worst “somewhere” was on the bottom of the Great Salt Lake. We’d taken the kids for an afternoon at Antelope Island State Park. There was a lovely beach with more than a football field length of shallow water before the lake deepened—perfect for the younger kids who couldn’t yet swim. There were also a lot of other families with the same idea. A couple of hundred visitors had churned up the water with sand and slit to the point that none of us could see the bottom as the kids frolicked and splashed in the mild waves.
Son #1 wasn’t impressed by the shallow safety zone. He headed straight out past the slowly descending shelf into deeper water. It wasn’t long before moisture and salt droplets encrusted his glasses, making it impossible for him to see. Too lazy to walk all the way back to shore, he motioned for Son #2 to trudge out and meet him. Then he handed off the glasses with strict instructions to take them back and give them to Mom.
Son #2 had very little interest in solving Son #1’s dilemma, so, as soon as his brother swam away, he dropped the glasses into three or four feet of murky water and headed over to dunk the nearest available victim.
It was a couple of hours before the wind picked up, and my children all headed for shore and warmer clothes. “Where’d you put my glasses, Mom?’” Son #1 asked. I understand my shriek of rage could be heard by sailboats floating on the lake miles away.
When I identified the culprit, I was furious. In my head, all I could see was my minuscule checkbook balance and a bill for hundreds of dollars worth of new glasses. Son #2 had no idea where he’d dropped the glasses, but he obligingly pointed in the general direction of Clearfield. I lined my shivering children up along the shore about 10 feet apart—my husband and I included—and we all headed back into the now-freezing water. It was too muddy to see the bottom or even our own feet, so the older ones rolled their eyes. But they went anyway. I ordered them to walk as far as they could without drowning and find those glasses!
I knew it was a waste of time, but I don’t think I cared. So, I steeled myself to the five-year-old who had tears running down his face from the cold and made them all keep moving. We’d gone about 80 yards when a couple of the younger children started bobbing to stay above water. I relented and sent them back to shore. It was then that Son #1 felt something solid at his feet. He reached down and picked up his glasses. Still intact. Which just goes to prove that sometimes even nature’s dominion acknowledges the power of a mother’s wrath.