Our Little Girl Is Blind

When my little daughter knocked on the door and came into the room she asked me — "May I go to my friend Linda's to listen to my new records at her house?" It was very hard for me to answer at once, because my child was blind. After some hesitation I answered — "Go, my dear" — and she went to the sitting room with steady steps, took up her collection of records, and set off toward the back door. Opening it was somewhat difficult, especially for someone with one hand weighed down by those records, and when she heard me stir to get up and help her she cried out with feeling — "Stay where you are, Mommy, and let me do this by myself" — then she quickly set the records on the floor, opened the door, gathered them up again, and said, with her back to me — "Goodbye, Mommy" — and went on her way with ease.

I followed her progress with my feelings, as though I were watching her with my eyes: I pictured her walking first along the paved path, her head held high and the breeze playing with her soft golden hair, and then crossing carefully the stone walk that brings her to Linda's house.

I used to follow her in the past, for fear she would lose her way or fall; but after a while I came to trust her ability to keep from falling, and her complete knowledge of her route. It might happen that she fell, if Linda or her sister had forgotten their cart in the garden path; but she would get up again and ask the first person she met — "Who put that cart in the way? Wouldn't it be better to put it back in its place?" — And so, little by little, I began to place my full confidence in her ability to rely on herself, and I became certain that the injury to her eyes — her handicap — was no obstacle to her, since she was accustomed to the other effective faculties at her disposal.

It was very painful to our hearts to discover that handicap in our little girl at the beginning. At first I noticed that her eyes — or rather her gaze — did not settle on anything visible before her, and that if something dropped from her hand to the floor she took no interest in retrieving it.

When I consulted our family doctor, he sent me to a specialist at one of the children's hospitals; and my daughter Eileen was upset when

help in this direction.

We used to go every day to the grocer's, which is not far from us. Eileen looked forward to that outing every day, so as to add to her knowledge. One day she asked me whether she might see our neighbor's fish with her hands, because she loved to see the little red fish the neighbor had been talking about. She paid attention to every word she heard, commented on it, and asked me to explain whatever was obscure to her.

On our way to the grocer's, the sweets-seller would draw us to his shop with the smell of his delicious cake, and I would buy a cake and share it with my little girl, in order to teach her how buying is done — for she once objected to me, saying, "Why do you give your money to the seller? We need it." In the grocer's shop I would let her have her freedom and watch her closely. At first she stumbled over some of its contents, but afterward she became able to push the shopping cart in front of her and to take the items we needed, like tins of milk, fruit, and so on. On our way back she would repeat: "I love visiting the grocer's shop very much, because it is such fun."

We gave her complete freedom inside the house; everything was allowed her except what had to do with electricity and the bookcase. When she began to crawl, she made the little dish cupboard, which I had emptied for her, into a hideaway she went to whenever the fancy took her. When she began to walk, she would open the drawers she could reach and empty them piece by piece to get acquainted with them, then put things back however she pleased.

That period was a happy one for us, because she kept advancing in her knowledge of the things around her. One day a specialist in children's affairs visited me and saw how I dealt with my daughter. After she had grasped my attitude toward her, she made me understand that it was good for my child to be carried when she needed it, but that we must think of devising ways to make her love walking on her own feet and relying on herself, instead of standing and waiting for someone to lead her. This was what I needed to think about, and to find the effective means for its success. From that time on I began to think that the question of my child's success in the affairs of her life did not depend at all on the means of instruction in special schools; rather, this hoped-for success must be our own work. And more important still was what I also came to realize: that the difficulties she meets in her life are due not so much to her inability to manage them because of her handicap as to our lack of confidence in her ability to overcome these problems.

For this reason we decided to enroll her in a kindergarten meant for healthy children instead of keeping her in the kindergarten for the blind, so as to follow the course that would enable her to rely on herself, as my friend the specialist advised in this matter. At first she balked, repeating the word "no, no" with all insistence; my distress grew, and tears scattered from my eyes at this scene, but I persevered in visiting that school time after time at short intervals, until my child began to grow used to the new atmosphere. One day I told her I would leave her for half an hour, and she did not object; and a month or more

after that day, in her joy at arriving at school she would forget to give me a goodbye kiss — indeed, once she pushed me out the door and shut it in my face.

At school she learned the locations of the places she moved among. She moved about with such ease that it was hard to tell her apart from the other children. When I first used to go to the school to bring her home, the children would crowd around me and ask: "Is it true your daughter is blind?" When I answered yes, they would say — "But her eyes are open" — or they would say, "But she runs faster than we do." Sometimes they forgot to warn her that things lay in her path, and so they were greatly astonished when she stumbled. At last

they realized that there was a difference between her and them. If she asked one of them for some toy, they would race to offer it to her; and in the end they came to treat her as one of themselves, without giving a thought to her handicap.

My fear was great when I once saw her at the top of the slide. But my astonishment was greater when I saw her sit down carefully in the right place, glide merrily down to the ground, and then land with the stance of a practiced hand who had played this game for a long time.

Once I was watching her with the other little ones at school, and I remembered how, at the school for the blind, each child played by himself, and if he joined his companions in play his play was slow, as his movements generally were; for if one of them wished to give his companion a piece of candy, for example, he had first to find his companion by touch, then hunt for his hand and put the candy in it. But my child would hold out her hand with the piece of candy to her sighted companions and say, "Here, take this piece," and in this way the whole business was done quite simply. Her sighted companions were also alert, as children are, to everything around them — this one draws his companion's attention to a red flower, that one to the sparks flying behind the train — and so my child learned many things she had not known, and gained from her sighted companions a store of pictures of visible things that profited her greatly.

The teacher used to give my child a toy to amuse herself with during the lesson, but Eileen objected and asked for a book. Very often she held it upside down, yet she felt happy holding it; indeed, she asked to draw in the drawing period, and often stained her clothes with paints. I remember the first drawing she brought home with her: from the moment she reached the door she cried, "Mommy, we made beautiful drawings today!" — then she opened her coat and said, "Look, Mommy, I've smeared my clothes with paint. Isn't that nice?" I answered that it was wonderful.

New words began to catch her attention more than before. She said to me one day, "They say — snow is white — what does the word 'snow' mean, and the word 'white'?" Since we could not go up to the mountain just then, I took her to the ice-seller, where she touched the ice and cried out on touching it, "Mommy, ice is very cold and rough to the touch!" But she grasped nothing of what the color white might be.

In the summer season we went to one of the beaches, where my child made new friends among the children and learned through them how to gather shells and little crabs; and after the summer ended, our beach talk together never stopped.

After she grew enamored of the twittering of birds, she began bringing me any shape she found of about the right size and asking me, "Is this a bird?" Since she could not get to know a bird at liberty, I took her to one of the boys who owned a tame bird, and she got to know it well with her hands; from that time on she began to talk about birds fluently.

We also tried to let her fully grasp the meanings of certain words whose sound she knew only superficially, like the words "high" and "heavy" and "soft" and the like. We tried to bring colors into our talk as with other children. She came to know her pink dress by the lace on its hem, or her yellow dress because it was made of muslin. But we were quite unable to make her grasp what stars and clouds are, or what water bubbles are; we did not, however, trouble ourselves much over this question.

In this period she began asking to help me in the housework, and she succeeded in setting the table, making her bed, and drying the dishes. And so we began to feel that she was surmounting the difficulties in her way one after another; and it also became clear to us that what we had needed during our time of despair and grief was to find confidence in ourselves as her parents, and then to draw from that confidence patience with her progress, however slow it might be, and to let her overcome some of these difficulties by herself, without our stepping in to solve them.

My child will graduate from the sighted children's kindergarten before long and will enter the public school like the other pupils, except for certain subjects she will study in the schools for the blind. And when she finishes her studies, I affirm with full confidence that she will face the world with a strong heart and steady steps, just like her healthy age-mates.