September 22 - Walking Trails

Lyle and I like to walk. Every day we like to walk somewhere. When we walk together, Lyle keeps me on the pathway or lets me know if other people are coming our way. When I walk alone, these are the same two things that can possibly give me troubles.

While I rarely walk on unfamiliar trails by myself, even on familiar pathways, I need to keep my wits about me. The edges or shore lines of walking trails are not always clearly defined. Some trails do have a painted yellow line to show the shoulder. My cane or walking stick cannot detect paint on the ground, and in poor light I do not see it. On rougher trails, the gravel on the path might merge with the gravel over the edge. I need to concentrate if I am to stay on the trail itself.

My second problem is staying out of the way when other people are approaching. Bikers coming from behind are pretty good at ringing their bike bells, but a silent jogger approaching from the rear can nearly startle my socks off!

Strangely, the bigger issue for me is people coming towards me. I suppose that they think I can see them coming. This is nearly always a false assumption. I see them only when they are practically beside me, appearing as it were out of nowhere. That is when I nearly jump out of my skin with a sudden start.

I will continue to enjoy my daily walks, but I am grateful to the bikers who use their bike bells and to the other hikers who call out a cheery greeting as they come closer.

Now I haven’t mentioned snow covered trails, but that is another story. Hopefully we will have a little more time yet before winter is here.

September 9 - Long Haul Vision Loss

Because it has been so long since my initial vision loss, I sometimes forget that I don’t see the world in the same way that people with twenty-twenty vision see things. Can it really have been more than thirty years ago that my sight changed! In some ways, living with vision loss has almost become the norm for me. In fact, there are times when I even forget that I don’t see well.

Sometimes, when I rush about ready to do something or other I suddenly realize that I can’t. I have simply forgotten that I am unable to see.

Let me explain with this one example. Several years ago, as Lyle was reading the local paper, he came across an ad for a special deal on my brand of shampoo. It was a great deal, so after my meeting downtown the next day I walked to the drug store. I was excited to take advantage of the sale. I’m not sure if you can imagine my surprise and subsequent frustration when I came to the shelves of hair care products. It was only as I was looking at the myriad bottles that I realized that I couldn’t tell the difference between the shampoo, conditioner or hair colouring – much less which particular samples had been on sale. Naturally there weren’t any sales assistants around to help so I ended up going home and waiting until Lyle was available. I’m not sure why I was so surprised because in my head, I knew that I hadn’t been able to see details such as product labelling for a number of years prior. I had simply forgotten that I had a sight disability.

I was also thinking about this strange phenomenon when I woke up this morning. I had been dreaming, and in my dreams I saw perfectly clearly. The people I met and saw in my dream land had the faces of people I knew when I could actually see them. These days I don’t see features and faces at all. In a way, it was quite frustrating to wake up to a world of blurred vision again.

Partial vision has many paradoxes. Even after the long haul of thirty plus years, I think that I am still getting used to it all.

 

 

 

 

September 2 – Parents and Grandparents

During the last week in August, Lyle and I had the privilege of looking after our granddaughter. The week was both wonderful and exhausting. For starters, Lyle and I aren’t as young as we were when we were parents ourselves, and keeping up with an energetic and enthusiastic six and a half year old was quite different than our usual retired lifestyle. By the end of the week, I knew that I had renewed admiration for the coping skills of parents of the current generation. How do they manage!

Recently, I was reading an autobiography of a young man who was a single parent to two young boys. Added to this mix was the fact that his former wife was mentally unbalanced and he himself was visually impaired. The former led to all sorts of emotional, legal and financial difficulties. The fact that he was visually impaired led to additional coping challenges.

I remember some of the challenges Lyle and I faced when my sight changed. We were both working full time and our children were only seven and eight years old. We had many family meetings as we attempted to negotiate our way through the new pathway that our lives had taken. What changes were needed when mom could no longer drive or read print? How could we work together as a family to overcome some of these new obstacles? Our children learned early on that they needed to help more around the house and to plan ahead for activities that involved transportation to other locations. I like to think that they also learned a degree of empathy as they had an inside look at my struggles. As I look at them as adults themselves, I think that they have both been able to transpose this compassion and understanding in their interactions with others in their lives.

So, hats off to all parents! I hope that you are receiving the support you need in this very important role. In our role as grandparents, Lyle and I are just looking forward to spring break when we can have Lexi for another week long sleep over!

In the picture with this post, Lexi and I are on our way to the playground. I love the fact that she is still young enough to innocently hold my hand.

 

Sue and Lexi