Blind woman who gets lost from the curb to the door of her workplace: “It’s hard when you’re in the dark all the time. It’s always dark for me.”
Vocational counselor: “But you’ll be so good at getting around, better than your friends who can see. Your sighted friends can only see in the light, so they don’t know how to find their way at night when it’s dark. And you will!”
There’s a metaphor in there. And it’s beautiful, but I can’t nail it down for the tragedy of this woman losing her sight in her forties. After a lifetime of seeing, she’s doing pretty well just to get up in the morning and move past her grief, let alone making it to work to stand and chop vegetables all day. Yes. She chops vegetables. In the dark. For hours at a time. Without cutting a finger. Imagine the courage that takes.
So she gets a little lost on the way to clock in, and people find her in the store room off the loading dock. And she can laugh about it. She’s doing great.
Would I?
Beth Bates 