GOING FORWARD

Just last week I mentioned some of those blind people who reach what seems like impossible feats. Today I attended a program where the speaker was Lex Gillette, a Paralympian who is blind. Someone asked him what was his longest jump, and I lost my breath when he said 22.9 feet and his hope was to reach 24 feet.

www.nbcolympics.com/video/lex-gillette-how-long-jump-while-blindCached

 

Just yesterday I met a lady in her fifties who is still alive after several brain surgeries for four large brain aneurysms and two strokes, who has just recently parked her car forever and is learning how to use an iPhone as a blind person. I decided to play my last blog for her just to try to make her realize so many people have their hands out to help her and encourage her as she encourages others, kind of like those people in Texas this week. She immediately stopped crying and picked up her phone.

 

Then I thought about myself and relived my tiny pathetic victory on Friday. It was a perfect walking day, partly cloudy, my favorite lighting for walking. I needed to go to the drug store for a prescription, but all I could think of was that one precarious street I would have to cross. I called a friend hoping she was going out and I could tag along. She was already gone. Finally, after about an hour of self talk I harnessed Vivi and started on my walk, less than a mile to get there. The distance was not the problem, the street loomed large in my mind. I guess if I were Lex Gillette I could just take a running start and jump the thing. Vivi and I began our walk in our usual speed until suddenly I realized I was short of breath, gasping a bit, heart racing and sweat beads on my forehead. My legs felt weak and even my shoulders felt tight and my brain felt stupid because it realized this was a full-blown panic attack. I turned around to go home but Vivi was stubborn and sat down on the sidewalk like she planned to have a sit-in. So I took a very deep breath, said a very urgent prayer and headed for Wall Greens. Amazingly, once we got to the street the fear went away. I remembered all the times I had sat in a cab waiting almost 5 minutes to turn onto that street so I knew I had a very long time to cross and unless someone ran the light we would be fine. What had I been afraid of anyway? Then I remembered, I still had to walk back home.

After getting the prescription and the pneumonia shot I had been putting off for two years my friend called to ask if I still needed a ride. I couldn’t believe I told her no. Somehow I hoped she would show up anyway, but she took me at my word so off we went. This time I was confident as we began crossing the street knowing that Vivi would stop on a dime should someone turn right on red in front of us. No one did, but just as we got in the middle of the 6-lane crossing a horn began a sustaining blowing as some young men started whistling and barking trying to distract Vivi. This has happened before and is a cruel thing for people to do, yet it happens. Vivi did not become distracted one bit, partly because she knows better, and partly because she hopes to get a small kibble once we get to the other side at that particular spot. She got one.

 

Now I could write a pretty long blurb about today when they were repaving my street and I needed to get away. Vivi and I walked on the grass, going behind the mailboxes. Just as we got behind them both the garbage trucks and the recycle trucks stopped and all I could hear was motors and glass falling into trucks one bin after another. I was on unfamiliar territory so couldn’t turn around and didn’t know exactly where those trucks were if I went forward. That is when you realize why you got a guidedog.

 

Tomorrow I think I may just take a break and stay home and play my full 88-key keyboard that a friend gave me about a month ago. She just couldn’t seem to stand the fact that I did not have a keyboard and she was not happy until I finally agreed to accept her more than generous gift. With so much happening this summer I had really not planned to ever play music again. Then, just like the lady picked up her iPhone yesterday, and just like Lex Gillette being willing to use his gift to jump almost 23 feet, I can hardly wait to drown myself in music … tomorrow. Maybe I can write a song about small and large victories and the good that still lives inside people in our world.

 

 

 

 

 

STILL LEARNING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

STILL LEARNING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

 

 

I have lived as a partially sighted person all my life, have been around totally blind people throughout my life, and have even met people who became blind in adulthood. Just imagine if at some point in your day your vision was to disappear totally without warning, or you had been diagnosed with an eye condition which would surely end in blindness. I know, you can’t possibly imagine such a thing and can’t even pretend to think of it, yet it does happen occasionally to some very fine people such as yourselves, and here’s a newsflash:  The government isn’t standing by to hand you a check and whisper in your ear that everything will be all right. 

Since working with a very few individuals who were unfortunate enough to have this happen in their adult lives, I am finding myself challenged by their enthusiasm and determination to pick up the pieces and keep going.

Often you see portrayed on TV a blind person such as this, who has accomplished major breakthroughs and seemingly impossible feats. I know some of those people and indeed they are ones who challenge me because they can leave me standing still while they go on to accomplish things that never even occurred to my mind. I salute them as they pass.

Then there are those folks who become totally dependent on others because it’s just too hard. This week I met one in the doctor’s office, yet it was not the blind person so much that melted my heart as it was the extreme patience of the lady who was willing to be his helper. Had I met him earlier in my life somehow I can see myself moving over to sit beside him and give him information about places to call for help, and I still would have asked him if he knew about the Library for the Blind if I would have had the chance. Once when I was a teenager Mom and I were shopping in Lexington and there was a blind man on the corner banging on a tin cup as he announced to the world that he was blind and needed money. Mama would not let me go down the street toward that man because she knew I was ready to grab his cup and tell everybody to stop giving him money because there were things he could do besides begging.

We once had a man in Raleigh who would walk by himself into a restaurant, stop at the door with his cane in-hand and announce “Can anybody please help me;” I’m blind.” Well, obviously they could tell that he was blind, but since losing more of my vision now I can certainly understand how he probably felt at times. I mean, I have actually walked from the sunshine into a restaurant and could see absolutely nothing in the darkened atmosphere. People don’t immediately rush up to help and you don’t always know if it’s because they’re occupied with something or is there anybody there anyway.

 Now, one of the saddest things I have run into lately are those people who have lost their vision as prominent middle-aged individuals, who do not know Braille and because of medical conditions may not be able to learn it because of their diminished sense of touch. They never learned to type. They find themselves illiterate, which makes it harder to learn new things. At first I almost saw those people the way I know some people have seen me … in a pitiful sort of way. All my life the scripture where Jesus says that if a blind man leads a blind man they both fall into the ditch has given me pause to frown, until now, and that’s because I realize that at times it probably takes a blind man to pull another blind man out of that ditch. So for all you blind people who have gone into teaching, rehab, social work, or the many occupations and organizations that help other blind people find their way, I hope you know how special you are.

We all come in contact with different situations as we live and as changes keep occurring we find ourselves trying to learn as we go. But just for a moment or two, try closing your eyes and think of a task you need to do, excluding driving of course.  It just may be that a blind person might need to show you how to complete that task.  

In this world of technology, blind people could be left in the dust, lock themselves behind closed doors and turn into couch potatoes, if not for that special technology out there that talks. Even though there is not such a thing as an app that makes someone see, there are apps that can tell blind people things they need to know, such as tell what color you have on, describe a picture, read printed materials, tell you where you are, read a book, type a document, call your friends, do calculations, read emails, make calls, schedule meetings, and on and on and on. Even though this is not a commercial for Apple or Google or the many companies that do such things for the blind, it really is like a blind person taking hold of a digital hand.

However, it is not the digital hand that will lead the circumstances of lost vision into their new existence but it’s the human hand that reaches out with help, not pity, that serves to lead us all forward, no matter what the conditions in our lives may be.

 

 

STILL LEARNING AFTER ALL THESE YEARS