SAUCIER: Seeing and believing

We were in Mexico, distributing free eyeglasses in poor Mayan villages in the state of Yucatan.

Vision care is a critical need for the indigenous people there, especially those who live in communities with little access to public health.

Of course, many of these couldn’t afford glasses even if they were available.

While both the men and women experience a deterioration of vision as they age, this is especially hard on the women. They are the seamstresses, making and repairing clothes.

 They do intricate, traditional embroidery, which they sell to supplement the meager family income. Difficult when you can’t see the needle and thread.

We collect used eyeglasses and give them to those who are in need. No doubt, there are some who come through our lines who could buy themselves a pair of glasses, but it is easier to offer them to all, no questions asked.

There are some, especially young people, who really don’t need any kind of vision enhancement, but think they will look more stylish in glasses. We’ll give them a pair of low-power readers because a little self-esteem goes a long way in their hard world.

An older woman in an immaculate white Mayan dress came up to me. She had long, straggly gray hair bunched in the back. Her face was leathered and lined. She was missing two teeth. 

She wore an old pair of black, horn-rimmed glasses and told me that she was having a hard time seeing through them, to the point that she could no longer sew. 

It took a while, trying on glasses with increasing powers of correction.

We finally found a pair of bifocals that brightened her eyes when she looked off into the distance and made her smile when she examined the needlework on her dress.

She thanked me with tears welling up behind those new glasses. She shook my hand vigorously, then turned it over, opened it gently, and put her old pair of glasses in it.

“Take these,” she said, “and give them to someone who needs them.”

She didn’t think of keeping them as a backup in case something happened to her new ones.

She didn’t see them as old and worn, but as a gift that had seen her through. She wanted them to help someone else as they had helped her. 

 Last Sunday in church, I heard Jesus say, “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

That’s when I recalled that beautiful lady in Mexico.