My sister-in-law Linda and I found these old glasses in their case when we were cleaning out Mom and Dad’s storage room. I know two things about them: they are old and I like them a lot. They did not belong to my parents and I’m guessing some previous owner of the house and storage building stuck them there a long time ago and forgot about them. I don’t know who they belonged to or when their owner lived. To a spinner of tales, that’s fodder enough for a story or two. Did the person who wore them live in Tahlequah? What did the capital of the Cherokee Nation look like then? Were the streets paved or made of dirt? Was the house and storage building within the city limits at the time the glasses were new? Or did their owner live in the country? Did the storage building even exist? Maybe it was built long after the glasses were bought and they were put back and forgotten.
In any event, the owner looked at a different kind of life than the one I know. I wonder if she (for some reason I think the owner was a woman) saw things differently? Did she view the world with hopeful eyes? Did she look forward to a bright future? I remember having a conversation with my dad about some event that I thought was pretty clearcut and he said, “Well, it all depends on the way you look at it.” And that’s true, whether we are talking about the present day or a hundred years ago, nobody looks at life in the same way. We have different viewpoints, opinions, and outlooks. If we don’t understand those viewpoints, at least we can respect them.
These glasses would work wonderfully in a mystery story. In the third Darcy and Flora book, Best Left Buried, these two sleuths find some items belonging to the past. Not glasses; not this time but maybe these old spectacles will find a place within the pages of another story. The glasses are from a time long gone by and I hope their owner viewed life hopefully from behind those lens. When she took them off and put them away, I’m sure she never thought they would be found and woven into a story some day. I doubt that she had any idea the world she saw would have changed so much. She might not even recognize Tahlequah today, glasses or no glasses. I venture to say she viewed life sometimes with wonder, sometimes with sadness and sometimes with joy. So do I. Although she lived long before my time, I have a feeling that as she looked at life, she saw problems as challenges and persevered. As Dad would say, “It all depends on the way you look at it.”
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