My Worship Lord's Prayer

 It was a quiet moment at the keyboard, a time for worship.  It was a surprise to me to find I had recorded this, so just went back and added an introduction.  Maybe you may enjoy a quiet moment as well, so come and worship with me today.

Guidedog Holly

This song was written in honor of my first guide dog, Holly.  She was a golden retriever who taught me how valuable having help really is.  She brought her own personality to me as we became a team, walking together through mountains, climbing Linville Falls, touring Williamsburg, as well as running through sands and beaches.  If she did not enjoy something she quickly showed me the exit doors.  I would pack all three grandbabies into a double stroller and off through the neighborhood we would go, Holly walking beside the stroller as I held her harness so she could lead me as well.  She got in front of the stroller once when a nice lady was wanting to reach in and move one of the babies over just a bit; Holly letting her know that no one but “Grandma” was to touch the little ones.  She always walked into a room with her head and her tail high, working the crowd.  Even though this song could as well be a tribute to Mego, this one was Holly’s song and Mego will have his own tribute as soon as my heart heals to a writing place. 

I can still feel Holly’s thick hair as I brushed her, hear her speak if I asked her too, and remember how she started pacing at 5 PM whether in a car or anywhere else to let me know it was her time to eat.  I wrote her song six months after taking off her harness, but it is just as real as though written today.  Hope you celebrate this “Golden” time with me.

Just For Fun

It always surprises me to realize things people notice.  I grew up in a different time, yet, if people noticed as much as they do today it alluded me.  When I was in school at the Governor Morehead School often bus loads of visitors from schools all over North Carolina unloaded their cargo right in front of the building (Lineberry Hall) where we were in class.  Usually they would be escorted into the auditorium where they were seated and a blind individual would be taken from class to talk to them about being blind, show them how we read Braille, answer questions and often would play the piano or sing for them.  I loved to be asked to do this, and was asked quite often until one day when I didn’t want to.  We were planning our graduation that afternoon, but reluctantly I walked into the auditorium and presented the usual speech.  Someone then asked me if I could play the piano or sing.  I had heard all kinds of stories from former students who did crazy things for the visitors. 

There was a story of one boy who was asked the question about how blind people eat.  He misinformed them saying that blind people tie a string to their front tooth and run it down to the plate and the fork followed the string up and down. 

My favorite story was one boy who walked up to the stage, with which he was quite familiar.  Yet, he ran into things he knew were there on purpose.  Finally he found the Baby Grande and played Mozart without missing a note.  After this he went to the edge of the stage, jumped off and ran out of the auditorium without hitting anything or anybody.    

This day I wanted my own story, so when I was asked to play and sing, I did so, and played and sang:

“Amazing grace how sweet the sound

That saved this little lamb.

I once was lost but now am found,

Was blind and I still am.”

The visitors, who were middle school ages, thought it was totally funny.  However, my principal did not. 

 

If visitors pulled onto our campus when we were not in class, we tried to do other obnoxious things.  Our favorite thing to do was to put a sighted girl up front.  We were all skaters and skated in a line,holding on to each others’ waists, with as many as six to eight.  We would start at the top of a hill which would lead right past all the parked buses and students trying to get in them to go home.  Students would scatter as we sailed by all the way down the street until we ran off on the grass past the infirmary, which was the other end of the campus. 

 

Yet, today, it always surprises me when my grandchildren get annoyed because people are staring.  Most of the time they are staring and smiling at my guide dog.  If we are walking somewhere and I know people are staring, I always hope the dog will behave like a pro.  Usually I get so nervous the dog picks up my mood and does something extremely stupid. 

It does still surprise me about things I miss at times.  One day a lady at our pool snapped at me when I bumped into her table.  Jonathan laughed as he informed me that I should be ashamed, that lady was reading her Bible. 

Just yesterday Brittany and I took Brittany’s dog Luna, and my guide dog, Vivi to the dog park.  I was fixing to correct Vivi for not playing nice with another dog when Brittany told me quietly that that particular dog that was bothering Vivi wanted more than just to play.

I was often show and tell for my children in elementary school.  One day I got the bright idea of taking the large Braille writer with me, letting each student sit with me and help him or her write their name.  They loved this until they inadvertently laid their names down.  Kevin and Christi came home with pockets full of Braille names for me to read so they could print whose name it was.

 

Now there are smart phones and cameras everywhere.  I have just decided to go right on walking as though I am in front of a group of visitors at school.  

 

Graduation 1963

It was June of 1963 and our small graduation class from the North Carolina State School for the Blind was sitting in the school store together for the last evening, reminiscing.

 

“Are we going to have a ten-year reunion?" Wayne asked.

"Ask Myra," Donald  said.  "She's secretary."

"Ten years is a long time," I said.  "Y'all just think, ten years ago we were in the second grade!"

Everyone was talking, but voices seemed to fade as my mind left the group and went on a journey all its own.  I traveled the miles from Lexington to Raleigh in 1950.  We stopped at the little store just outside of Cary.  The man had monkeys in cages.  Through the years lots of students who came down Highway 64 all learned about the "Monkey store," and the store keeper learned all our parents names.  Lots of Sundays parents would ask about other parents.  Had they been by yet?  Etc.  This is where, when I was little,  I would sneak away from the car, go away to the back of the store, and throw up the emotions I was unable to express. 

I remembered hitting the brick building of K. Cottage with my fists and screaming at it, throwing a real tantrum because Mama and Daddy were leaving me there, and I knew they would not be back for a very long time.  I could still smell the luggage and the pimento sandwiches.  I could hear Ms. Jordan cough and laugh and I could still feel her paddle on my bare bottom. 

I remembered singing along with the Country Jukebox on Saturday nights, Hank Williams, Ernest Tub, Kitty Wells, and Web Pierce.  Again in my heart I loved Anna and the doll with the pink dress and the Hershey's candy. 

My mind then roamed around Cook Cottage, touching the clotheslines, the bushes, the swings, and the campus posts.  I remembered the woodpecker who announced spring had come every year on top of the vent upstairs.  I touched the radiators with my mind’s hands, feeling the paint peeled off some of them and sometimes water dripping from the control so it burned a hand when it was being turned off.  I threw open the windows of spring and the jukebox at Pullen Park played into our Sunday afternoons.  Pullen Park was never as much fun as it was when Ms. Jordan took us as little girls, but it was our place to play and my heart played there for a few minutes before wandering on across the campus.

I thought about all the boys in my class and how little I had really known them.  I realized all the students, older and younger, had thoughts of their own and I suddenly wanted to run down to K. Cottage and start hugging them all, but I knew that could not happen tonight any more than it could throughout the years.

   

Tomorrow my classmates and I would put our luggage into the car for the last time.  How I wanted this day to come when I was little; now tears burned the backs of my eyes just thinking of it.  I wanted to run to Fisher Cottage and hop between the cold white sheets and stay there. 

Suddenly someone turned out the lights and Donald’s arms went around me.  We shared one sweet kiss as I realized tomorrow was almost here.  Donald, Billy, June, Jackie, all my friends and everyone I loved here would be gone from my life.  Tears crept silently into the kiss. Donald thought they were for him; I let him keep his thoughts. 

…

Lexington


Mama, Daddy and my two grandmothers got into the car.
“Wana see how fast she’ll go?”   Daddy asked.
“Lord no”, Mama said, “You’ll scare our mothers to death.”
“I’ll bet Susie will want to go fast,” Daddy said.
“Don’t be too sure,” Mama said.

 

 

How it is Done

I have been writing this blog for three months now.  It is my hope that blindness does not define who I am, rather, that in many ways I have defined what it is.  It is impossible to just leave it out, because it is always there.  However, I do hope you have been introduced to me in lots of other aspects of life.  If you have followed my writing, you may know that I love God, my family including my guide dogs, friends, music, books, children, vacations, swimming pools, exercising, walking, people, my iPhone, learning, and pizza. 
 

It is also my hope that in the reasonably near future to publish a historical manuscript concerning my years between 1950 and 1963 at the North Carolina State School for the Blind and Deaf in Raleigh, North Carolina, now better known as the Governor Morehead School. One reason I started a blog was to gain traction for my book. I can familiarize readers with myself and my writing through my blog and hopefully continue to broaden my audience. Thank you to everyone who is reading, following, sharing, liking, and commenting on my blog posts!

In the meantime, I just want to say a few words about publishing a blog as a blind person using a computer and screen reader.  It would be self-serving to let you think I’m smart enough to do it all by myself.  Some blind people probably can.  As I go and grow in this area, a lady, who I feel I can now refer to as “friend”, has allowed herself to step this far into my life and the world of the screen reader.  To put pictures and songs on the blog is not yet all that easy for me; so she fills in that gap.  Often I put a story out there only to realize the spacing is different due to site specifications.  I am expecting in the very near future to be able to post my own music, maybe pictures, and preview to correct the spacing.  Any blind people out there who want to offer constructive help with screen reader commands, of which I am not yet familiar, please do so. Until then, I would like you all to meet Jennifer Raven, an excellent helper who teaches even as she learns herself and quickly understands where I would like to put what.  The blog words, stories, pictures and music are my own, but the beautiful appearances and placement of graphics and/or videos and music are her artistic gift. 

 

Hello! My name is Jen and I have been working with Myra on the startup of her blog. I can say it is an absolute pleasure working with and learning from Myra when we get together. Myra emailed me back in February after getting my contact info from acquaintances of friends; I had just finished helping another Raleigh lady self-publish a book. I phoned Myra back and we chatted about her email that described her wanting to start a blog and also about publishing her book at some point. She invited me to meet at her house and get started but I had to get back to her about a day and time. The next thing I said was, “Should I email you about a time? Can you email?”  Myra said she used a screen reader and that emailing, or texting and calling were all good ways of communicating. I don’t think that I assumed blind people couldn’t use certain technologies; she did email me initially after all! Truthfully, I had just never really thought about it. Myra’s poetic writing style and well-timed wit have inspired me to think about it more. Not just blindness, but life in general.

We have had to do a lot of thinking, and problem solving, while working on her blog. I came into the situation with some computer savvy advice… And then I met Jabber Jaws. That’s Myra’s affectionate nickname for JAWS, the screen reader that allows her to navigate and command her laptop. When adding things to the blog, I first familiarize myself on how to use a specific website (like SoundCloud which is used to upload and embed her songs on her blog). Then, together we steer through then websites. There are always quirks because everything varies when you’re scrolling through using JAWS keyboard commands versus seeing a mouse icon and directing it across the screen. I listen to everything the computer says so I can recognize and assist in both of us understanding the workflow. That being said, Myra reads, types, scrolls, and has JAWS set to speak VERY fast. Myra also has great patience, especially when I say, “Um, let me figure out what’s going on.”   

I feel very fortunate and have enjoyed every moment of both teaching and learning that has come from starting a blog and a friendship. I can’t wait for things to continue to unfold for Myra. Please keep following and sharing her blog!

 

Marks on my Walls

Children's voices by Amber and Abbie Gallant 


Check out my previous blog post, Monster Trucks, to meet the kids in this song! 

Just Sayin

I remember assignments when we were expected to explain the meaning of a famous poet’s work … what did they mean by this or that, explain this particular verse,  what was the purpose of saying certain things?  With at least fifty people in a class we could get as many as fifty different answers, and if they did not agree with the professors’ interpretations, they were all wrong.  Definitely I am not Robert Frost, Emily Dickenson, Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Yeats, or any other of those famous names with which most of us are familiar.  However, there are times when I write something that is crystal clear to me, yet I wonder what it might mean to someone else.  Along those philosophical lines I decided to share some of my less self-explanatory work.  I’ll give you a hint, both the poem and the song deal with standing between childhood and moving forward, and if you want to write about what it means, the word “bricks” suggests childhood in the poem. 

 

 

BRICKS WE ARE MADE OF 

Perhaps no one can see you;

But you are someone I never met

And everyone I ever knew.

You are the voice that said:

“yes” and “no” and “always” and “never.”  

You smell like a blade of grass, a bowl of soup , a season.

You held me in your arms, dropped me face down

And sang me to sleep--

But there were dimples in your tears.

You asked me not to hold you, and you cried when I didn’t.

You are a daydream, a nightmare--

A communion of savored wine

And ties that would forever bind.

They tore away your bricks and dropped them on these pages;

They sound like the whisper of thunder

With faces of clay that stick to my fingers.

My moods carve them out like Geppetto

And they run away.

But time pulls their strings and they dance in syncopated memories.

The beat of the jump rope taps out tomorrow.

I stand on the letter “you”  

And watch you wave hello and good-bye with the same hand.

The ends of your strings are tied to my heart.

They tap out yesterday 

And map its voices with raised letters of one-way streets.

I cannot keep you while I say good-by;

So I will write your epitaph

And you will answer with ears that hear

“yes” and “no” and “always” and “never.”

 

 

 

Throwback Thursday from Journal

May 19, 2003

If I had gray hair, gray eyes, and a gray outfit I'd fit right into today but the sun shines from my heart.

Saturday, two friends, Winnie and  Margaret, along with Mom, Mego and I, went to Seagrove, North Carolina and looked at pottery.  I was totally unaware that this place existed.  I found myself paddling through carefully placed stone paths--the kind that rock when your foot lands on them and you think there surely must be rubber balls underneath them plotting your eventual fall into crannies of weeds and sticks and briars.  However, you walk flawlessly into a wooden country door where dusty pottery lives on dustier shelves.  The atmosphere is rustic and mountain-like.  Then there is a real log cabin. 

I stood in the middle of the floor while Margaret read where the furniture used to be placed and where the stove used to be.  The floor was bumpy packed dirt.  I knew if somebody would sing, the acoustics vibrating among log walls would play the sound like a symphony.  Standing there in the middle of a room that once was a home my mind wrote every novel I have ever read about early settlers in America, written to old Irish ballads that bounced my soul around like the dancer it always has been.

Then we took Mom to Lexington.  I stood at the edge of what used to be Daddy's garden and as it rained, I could almost hear the phone ringing and his voice asking me:  "Is it raining on the garden down there?"   Yes Daddy, it has been raining on the garden ever since you left it. 

Tonight is a friendly thing capping off the restful reflections in my ever-speaking memories.  They lie  down in gentle thoughts that trip right over the rubber stoned paths of yesterday.

 

Blue is for Boys

Kevin arrived on the planet three weeks ahead of schedule.  It seemed to me like he hardly opened his eyes for the next three weeks.  My husband and I were visually impaired and had drilled the doctors in both Raleigh and at Duke about the possibility of passing on the genes that had brought on our sight deprivation.  Even so, I kept asking the doctor in the hospital if my baby’s eyes were okay because he kept them shut so much.  We had a long talk and I thought the doctor understood about babies and blindness.  Still, on the morning I was going home, I noticed four doctors coming into the hospital room along with several nurses until the room was crowded.  It didn’t take me but a minute to realize they wanted to watch me feed, burp, and change the baby.  At that time my vision was “count fingers at nine feet.”  

When Kevin finally did keep those eyes open it was obvious that they had the look of intelligence.  Knowing this, I began teaching him his letters at the same time he was learning to say “Mommy” and “Daddy”.  One day we were downtown waiting on a bus which all had signs of where they were going.  I could not see the signs, so I held Kevin up.  He was not yet quite eighteen months old, but people around me were shocked when the child began spouting off things like “L O N G V I E W G A R D E N S,” the name of our bus.  

I could read the Little Golden Books if I held them close to my eyes, but I knew Kevin would want to see the pictures.  I memorized many Little Golden Books until he could read them for himself.  By the time Christi came along, I found out you can buy books with Braille on one side of the page and pictures on the other.  What a relief!

Kevin didn’t seem to get into as much mischief as his sister.  I truly believe to this day, it is because he did not do things so spontaneously but planned exactly how not to get caught.  He also enjoyed playing tricks on me at times.  Many times I was holding onto his arm while we were running on the pavement.  He would say, “Step up.”  I would make an awkward step as he laughed and said, “Mama, you know there are no steps in a parking lot!”  Since I only could see out of one eye, it was always easy for him to slip his hand over that side of my plate and steal French fries.  Actually I enjoyed those little harmless tricks as they broke up the monotony of ordinary days, or of knowing I had to hold onto his arm if I expected to run very fast in a strange place. 

Once in fifth grade, I visited his class with my mom.  Since Kevin had been learning how to make introductions, his teacher told him he could introduce her and my mother.  He looked at the two women, trying to assess which was the oldest so he could introduce her first.  It didn’t help his grade when he introduced his teacher first.

I wonder when he writes his memoirs if he will remember all those bike rides we took through the neighborhood when his dad was at work, before he got his driver’s license.  My vision was “count fingers at six feet” then.  And then there was one day we both got the bright idea of walking home from the doctor’s office, not realizing it was eight miles.   

Today an eight-mile walk would truly just be a walk in the park for him as he enjoys running relays and/or marathons.  I will leave his life’s accomplishments for him to write at some later date, perhaps with his own son. 

I must say that the very best times of my life have been those of raising my children and the times I kept my grandchildren for them to work.  I enjoy a blessed relationship with each of them individually and as a family.  Kevin and I don’t take long walks together anymore, nor run through streets or parking lots as Vivi is my guide now.  My vision is count one finger at three inches.  Yet, I can still see in my mind that little blue suit that swallowed my boy when I carried him home from the hospital.