On Monday, my daughter walked in a saints parade at her Catholic school. The school assigned her “Saint Lucy” because of her middle name — Lucia — but I hadn’t realized until she was at home, practicing her speech and rolling her eyes when my husband and I advised her to project her voice, that St. Lucy is the patron saint of vision and light. I vaguely knew this; I’ve had enough exposure to Romance languages to know lumiere, luz, luce have to do with light, and when I was six, I remember my Montessori school dressing me up as Santa Lucia with the four candlestick wreath in my hair, walking into the darkened classroom with a feeling of deep responsibility and power. But I hadn’t strung the beads together. And so when my daughter explained that Saint Lucy protected those with blindness, and looked out for those with vision problems, I felt a strange kind of convergence, as though a secret signature of things had come into focus.
My daughter has amblyopia, a sight disorder in which the brain fails to process inputs from one eye and over time favors the other. It is treatable when caught early, and has meant that she has worn an eye patch for periods of 30 minutes to five hours every day since she was 18 months old. In the grand scheme of things, minor: correctible, relatively pain-free, and not too disruptive to her everyday life. But it has also been a long road, and though my daughter possesses a forbearance that far outstrips my own and has submitted gracefully to her occlusion therapy for the entirety of her sentient life, I would be lying if I did not say it has been a tedious daily tax. Not a day goes by that we don’t think about her eye. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel relived when she can peel the patch off. And not a day goes by that I don’t think, “This girl is tough as nails.”
On Monday, then, I realized that her very name has carried the benediction we have leaned on to make our way through this condition. Lucia: a hidden-in-plain-sight talisman we have unknowingly held.
It moved me, you know? The way sometimes grace is staring us right in the face, and we don’t see it. The way it can be hidden in a name, sandwiched between stoplights on the way to a doctor’s appointment (“slow down, Jen”), whispered by your five year old son from the backseat: “Good job, Mama.”
Those fragile bells again, calling me to that other-world:
Lucia, Lucia, Lucia
Post-Scripts.
+It turns out, Lucia carries quite a lot. I wrote about why this name means so much to me here — it was my great-grandmother’s name — and now it has a beautiful new dimension.
+Love in the big ways and small.
Shopping Break.
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+Gorgeous red shirtdress! For Valentine’s Day and beyond.
+Just ordered these new “camp” pants from J. Crew in the khaki! LOVE! They reminded me loosely of these Citizens jeans.
+Also added this new pointelle henley to my growing collection of pointelle. Look for less here.
+OMG! Celine triomphe sunglasses on sale…I have been eyeing these for weeks now and might snag in the pink color…!
+Freda Salvador’s iconic woven flats available in fresh, just-dropped colors! (Good look for less here.)
+Recent beauty acquisitions: bronzing serum, blemish patches (so, so useful not only for treating the area but for keeping you from touching it!), and another tube of my favorite brow product. The latter is great as a gel of course but even when I don’t have time to fill in with pencil, this sort of does the trick – fills, shapes, holds.
+Valentine’s day finds for littles. To add to this roundup: these adorable socks. And your son will look adorable in this red rugby for the occasion!
+These cage jellies remind me of the ones from The Row that were ALL over last summer.
+Cute, well-priced winter buys: this puffer and these cozy boots.
+Two beauty products I am at the point of absolutely swearing by: my red light mask (truly, Mr. Magpie and I both use this religiously and have seen such a difference in the overall clarity of our skin, fine lines around the eyes, and in blemish repair/recovery — use code JEN10 for 10% off) and these vitamin-soaked pads. I use the latter after applying vitamin C in the morning. Skin glows.
+Love this striped mariniere.
+Two things I absolutely love in my closet: this scented ceramic pomegranate I bought in Florence (perfumes the whole room) and this stick lamp!
Oh wow, Jen, how very cool!
What a beautiful post, Jen. In my own family, we often talk how my siblings and I have each, remarkably, “grown into” the meanings of our names without any efforts on our parts. Names, even through history, hold so much importance… just look at Biblical characters, and how they were named with purpose, often foreshadowing an event to come. My mom still laughs at how I would growl as a baby (my middle name, Ariel, means “Lioness of God”), and even now, most who know me would describe my “spirit animal” as a cat (quite comical, as my husband is definitely a golden retriever… opposites attract??).
My older brother had amblyopia, too. My mom vividly remembers when, as a young boy, he casually told her, “Mom, did you know I can’t see?” “You can’t see?!?” she replied, in shock. Thus began the years of eye education, eye patches, glasses… as a teenager, he made the decision to have corrective surgery, and his eye no longer wanders. Vision is such a precious gift! My mom still hangs his first pair of glasses on her Christmas tree each year.
P.S…. loved your collab with Inslee! I “found you” through an Inslee post many years ago. And I had “found Inslee” through a co-worker who had the cutest desk calendar in her office. Amazing how that “invisible string” connects us…
Hi Braeden! I love the concept of “growing into” the meanings of our names. My middle name is Marie, which I only later in life realized was an echo of my special devotion to St. Mary. So profound…
And loved reading about your connection to the lioness / big cats!!
So glad we’ve crossed paths!
xx