Then and Now

Then:

I did not just go a close distance to the little red school house.  Instead, I went one hundred miles away to school in a red brick building with columns out front.  The North Carolina School for the Blind was a beautiful campus in 1950.  Raleigh, North Carolina was a big town for such a little girl.  We have both grown now, but at times I still feel lost and small in Raleigh’s population of 423,179.

The building I called home at school had a porch that ran all the way across the front and seemed as long as a city block to a child.  In the fall of 1950, that porch was filled with little blind girls, lost, afraid, and wondering what in the world had happened, and where were their mommies. 

As I lived on the school campus, I soon noticed some differences between home and school.  At home I slept on a feather bed under quilts to keep warm; at school I slept on a mattress between cold sheets.  Mama let me wear overalls and climb trees; My housemother and teachers made me wear dresses and play games.  Lexington had one radio station; Raleigh had three.  When at home I played hymns and country songs on the piano; at school I played Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.  In the country I ate pinto beans and “arsh taders”; in school we ate lima beans with boiled potatoes.

Now:

Today I sleep on a comfortable mattress covered with soft sheets.  Sometimes I still play games with friends, but seldom wear dresses.  I play hymns and some older country songs on the piano but love listening to Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.    Lexington has at least three local radio stations now; I have no idea how many there are in Raleigh.

When I go to Lexington and am fixing to leave I say:  “It’s time to go home.”  When I am in Raleigh and thinking of seeing Mama I say “It’s time to go home.”   Thus, my life’s journey has begun.

From the little children at church in Lexington who whispered:  “She’s blind,” to what I call my little bungalow where my older neighbors tell the new ones moving in: “She’s blind.”

People who know me well honor me by forgetting that fact altogether most of the time, just hoping they remember should I start to walk off the side of a mountain.