Owls and Orchids

“Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

image from writelife.net

Our whole lives are made up of words. For most of us they are the medium we communicate through, and at times I wonder how on earth I would manage if words didn’t exist. The deaf cannot hear what is said but must rely on sign language to bring what is said to life, but the richness of the words is lost somehow. The blind can hear what is said but cannot see what is described, and must rely on braille to read. I wondered what it would be like to have, what to me is an integral part of my life, removed from me.

I had always been blessed with 20/20 vision, read copiously, did craft work and always wondered what I would do, or how I would react if I was unable to do the things which made me happy, and more importantly, relaxed me and fed my imagination. As fate would have it, in a small way I was about to find out.

When I was pregnant with my second child I suddenly found I was getting a lot of headaches when reading. The same thing happened with my tapestry and crochet work. Headaches! It annoyed me since I was getting too huge to do some of the things I had been used to doing.  (Gardening, especially weeding becomes problematic when one is unable to bend down and get to the ground, far less get back up again!) Now I was having trouble reading and doing my craft work. I was not happy. A hippopotamus was lumbering around my home or a beached whale was inhabiting my lounge room. It was all a matter of how I felt at the time. It was a time when you are more present than at any other because your awareness of the changes within your body are a constant reminder of life.

image from bigstockphoto.com

In desperation I found myself at my optometrist. As far as I was concerned he wasn’t very helpful. The pressure of vitreous fluid inside the eye changes during pregnancy, hence affecting vision. Wonderful, not only did I have to share my home with a beached whale I also had to put up with a sightless mole blundering around! I was slightly mollified to hear that in “most” cases it went back to normal after the birth.

Humpf! After my daughter made her appearance, not a moment before the nine months was up, my eyesight became much worse.  More bad news was to follow, I had to wait at least three months before anything would be considered, in case it returned to normal.

I blundered around, barely able to see and unable to focus, terrified of sticking a safety-pin into my daughter as I changed her nappy. Worse still was changing my son, who at eighteen months was like a live eel on the change table. I’m not sure what was worse, fearing I would stab him with a safety-pin or him falling off the table as he writhed around and I tried to catch him. Stepping on him as I tried to move around and he crawled faster than I could walk. That too was a nightmare.

image courtesy of flickriver.com

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So I got some glasses, eventually, and both my children survived. I was the only person to get stuck, repeatedly, by the safety pins, fall over the toys and bang into cupboards. All in all, a good outcome for most.

It did however, give me a miniscule taste of the difficulties faced by the blind and the deaf.  I know that the challenges I had almost drove me crazy.  I applaud anyone with any kind of challenge handling those situations.  I complained about my glasses, bitterly at times, as I became hot and they repeatedly slipped off my nose! I cursed as I had to wear them to dry my hair (heated up again, and fogged up) and because of pure vanity, had to wear them to put make up on – too hilarious for words. At times there was more make up on the glasses than on me! Not to mention the millions of fingerprints from my adorable children who thought they were the goal to grab each time they got close enough to them, especially if they had food on their hands!

Quite a few years later I had lasix surgery and put away my glasses for good. It is reassuring to be able to see unaided again, although I will never forget what it was like for that brief year. I am grateful for the advances with eye surgery. When I first began wearing glasses it was impossible to correct my vision with the lasix surgery.  It was a test to my patience waiting until they developed the process whereby they could do it.  Patience never was my strong suit!

I now listen to my husband cursing his glasses as he peers over the top of them to see me as we talk and curse again as he goes back to work and they aren’t where they should be – or more often he has put them down and cannot find them!

image courtesy of nationaltrust.org.uk

The colours of life are almost too beautiful for words.

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A tangerine and russet cascade of kaleidoscopic leaves, creates a tapestry of autumn magic upon the emerald carpet of fading summer.

Judith A. Lindberg