We were sitting in church, my parents on either side of me. That’s where we were pretty much every Sunday, in the large Presbyterian congregation Mother and Dad had joined. There were lots of people in the pews around us.
The past three years had been the best of my life so far. With the artificial eye in place, I was more confident. Less head-hanging, less avoiding face-to-face encounters. I could go places, see people—and be seen. Attending school and church on Sunday morning was not the exercise in embarrassment it used to be. Life was vastly better than it had been when my bad eye stared out at the world, uncovered.
I still cringed in front of cameras, though, because the new eye, this expensive prosthesis, never looked quite perfect in photos.