Gone! My eyeglasses are gone. My reading glasses! 

I spent more than an hour looking everywhere in my apartment. They were gone.  My reading glasses are sacred to me because reading is sacred to me.  Been a sanctuary of mine for as far back as I can remember. Climb into a book and breathe. Therefore, my reading glasses stay in my home – where I do my reading – 24/7.  My home is where my glasses live, and, to speak in well-worn parental parlance, they’re grounded; they always have been; they’re not allowed out.

I do have bifocals as backup. I can’t read for any length of time with bifocals; I’d be about as comfortable doing that as I would be using a flame thrower to dry myself off after a shower. 

I am the only person who lives here. My housemate is a 14-year-old black lab mix named, Charley. There may a reason dog spelled backwards spells, God. I used to say dogs are people too until one day it occurred to me, I was insulting the dogs. They never judge you, and I’ve never known one to fib. I’ve never known one to read, either. I knew Charley was not involved in what was beginning to look like, the eyeglass caper.  Someone must have stolen them!

Wrong again. I found them, in a mirror of all places. There they were, hanging by their soft red eyeglass cord in front of a wonderful picture of two wolves; a picture that happened to be on the shirt I was wearing.  

I have the awareness of a tree stump. Thought I’d say it before someone else did.