What would I be seeing if not for Julia?
Eye misalignment, strabismus, can last forever without proper treatment. I had estropia, a type of horizontal strabismus, where my right eye pointed inwards. Going by photos, mostly daycare and school photos because my parents didn’t approve of cameras or phones on account of the batteries (their manufacture and disposal), my right eye was misaligned when I was two. When I was four, the inward turn was more evident. By the time I was six and attending primary school in Summerfield, my pupil sat firmly in the corner of my eye. A teacher told my parents they should take me to a doctor. They declined the direction:We love her just the way she is.
When I was seven, my parents were informed my vision was deteriorating. I was increasingly clumsy and sometimes I saw double. They countered:She’s doing well at school.
The school had a duty to report possible neglect, which they did. Social services contacted Dr McLeod, who got in touch with my parents. Predictably, they said:We don’t want medical intervention.
I wasn’t part of the discussions, but only a curtain separated my bedroom from my parents’. In Summerfield, back then, my parents had cheap rent, selling eggs gave them an income, and they were passionate about closing the open-cut mine. They didn’t want to leave, so had to make concessions:If they think she has a problem, let them fix it.
Strabismus presents in a lot of different ways but the effect it had on me was that, eventually, I started to see two of everything. I managed to read, but I found it difficult to catch a ball and even if someone didn’t trip me deliberately, I’d be more likely to fall over a step or a crack in the footpath or something I might’ve imagined might be a crack even though it was only a shadow. After a while, the brain tells the eye that’s causing the problem it’d be better for that eye to switch off entirely. The eye, over time, does what the brain tells it to do.
To stop you seeing double, the eye switches off.
You lose vision in that eye.
Glasses and exercises can correct strabismus by training the problem eye to straighten.
Julia wasn’t a paediatric ophthalmologist, but she made sure I was tested by the best in the district. She wasn’t an orthoptist, who would have given me exercises and monitored me month to month, but she consulted with one and worked with me herself. She wasn’t an optometrist, who could adjust my glasses regularly to strengthen muscles in my eye so the pupil could look right and left and straight ahead, but she drove me to one.
I was a kid. Being in a car with an adult, a doctor my parents didn’t approve of, was awkward. Julia was also Cameron’s mother and that was awkward too. My fascination for him was complicated. I competed with him. I hated him. I had a crush on him.
Tall viburnum hedges grow either side of the gravel driveway that leads to Julia’s house, and I follow them to a parking area. A slender grey-haired woman, dressed in pale blue and leaning on a stick, walks slowly down the verandah steps and waits as I jump out of my ute. It’s only when I get close that I recognise her.
‘Amelie.’ She holds out her hands. ‘Welcome.’
In the past few months, we’ve communicated in courteous emails. We talked once on the phone. But all of a sudden, words aren’t enough. She wouldn’t have been allowed to hug me when I was a child, but now we’re both adults. I wrap my arms around her delicate frame, and she hugs me back.
‘Thank you.’
She pulls away slowly. ‘No thanks necessary.’
I talk through my tears. ‘You always said that.’
‘You’re even more lovely than I imagined you’d become.’ Julia would be in her late sixties, but frailty has aged her. She takes my hands. ‘Perfection.’
‘My eyes are straight thanks to you.’
She holds my arm tightly as we take the steps to the verandah. I try not to look at her too closely but—
‘Yes, I’m a little on the slender side, but stronger than I was.’ She pauses at the top of the steps and pats my arm. ‘I have a neurological condition which, with luck, won’t kill me for many years to come. Modern medicine. Where would we be without it?’
Julia’s back verandah looks over a garden. Two tall gums, vibrant green hedges, roses, hydrangeas and a vegetable patch.
‘What a beautiful outlook.’
‘I miss tending the garden, but I do love to look at it.’
Jimmy, the man with the bedraggled straw hat I’d met outside the surgery, charges out of a small greenhouse and waves. ‘Won’t be long, ladies!’
Julia directs me to a glass-topped cane table and matching chairs, and we sit opposite each other. ‘Have you recovered from yesterday’s illness?’ she asks.
‘Didn’t Cameron—’
‘I couldn’t get a word out of him, nor Anna for that matter, so I assumed it was a medical issue.’ She winks. ‘My children know I would have peppered them with questions.’
‘Primary dysmenorrhoea. I’m fine today.’
Jimmy, in gardening greens and wearing clean if very old work boots, approaches the table with a tray. A pot of tea, cups and saucers and a lemon cake.