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