October 25 - Please Pass the Butter

After a three day family weekend, we were finishing up with Sunday brunch. Our son had cooked the pancakes and bacon and our daughter-in-law had prepared the fruit and other fixings. We were all relaxed and the conversation was easy. Then daughter Jennifer looked up and asked, “Mum, could you please pass the butter?”

My eyes scanned the table in an attempt to locate the position of the butter dish.  Where was it? There was a break in the chatter as the others silently watched my effort to locate the elusive dish. Then Lyle reached over in front of me and passed the dish across the table to Jennifer.  Everyone let out their breath and burst out laughing. “Good call, Dad,” said our son. It had been clear to one and all that my inability to see had made it impossible for me to comply with Jen’s innocent request.

This is what I love about my family. They are both mindful and forgetful of my poor vision. They don’t put my vision at the forefront of our interactions. I am fortunate to have several close friends who are able to walk this balance between care and concern and a measure of protectiveness.

Please pass the butter. I love it! For the instant of forgetfulness on Jen’s part, I was just one of the family without need of any special considerations. When it was obvious that I didn’t have the ability to see and comply, the mindfulness kicked in, Lyle passed the butter and we were back to a normal family gathering again.

October 16 - Bluffing!

My long time friend and I were having a leisurely coffee chat about this and that when Shirley reminded me of some of the aspects of my initial reactions to my vision loss. In particular Shirley, remarked of how I used to try to bluff my way through situations that really required sight.

Bluffing or faking it is not unusual for people who are experiencing vision loss. I know that in my early years of impaired sight, I was pretty good at this way of coping. I’m not really sure why I wanted to keep up the pretense. Possibly, I just didn’t want to talk about my change in circumstance. Possibly I just wanted to go on being just like everyone else. I know that I had an abhorrence of thinking that others might look on me with pity. Possibly, I thought that if I stuck my head far enough into the sand, this whole vision loss thing would turn out to be just a bad dream.

Although I was good at pretending, this coping behaviour wasn’t especially productive. For instance, when someone asked me to look at something – a photo, some printed information, some distant scene, or whatever, I would simply nod and smile. I wonder now what I was missing out on. In retrospect, it would have been far simpler to admit that I couldn’t see and ask for an explanation of whatever was being pointed out to me.

Lyle and I are church goers, and although this should have been one of my safest environments, I went for a number of years trying to bluff my way through Sunday services.  I would always accept a hymn book and a printed bulletin. Standing in the pew, I would open the book at some random page and hold it in front of me. I have a pretty good memory and was able to sing most of the hymns. I think that the change came one Sunday when Lyle reached over and turned the book from its upside down position to the right side up.

Looking back, I wonder just how many people I was fooling. I think of the old saying that you can fool some of the people some of the time but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Today, I wonder why I even tried. Certainly life is easier now that I have emerged from this stage of denial.

These days I have learned to be appreciative of the helping hands of my sighted friends.  Now that I’m not hiding behind the facade of bluff and pretense, I feel more comfortable in my own skin. Hopefully I have also become more gracious and accepting of help when it is offered.

 

October 7 - Horror Stories

In my last post, I wrote that some airline passengers who were visually challenged had some unfortunate experiences when they were travelling alone. Since then, several people have asked what those experiences might have been. The people who asked this question all had sight and they told me of their own hard luck travel experiences of delayed flights and lost luggage. How then, they asked, did the experiences of passengers with sight difficulties vary from this?

From what friends tell me, and from my own experiences, I think that the most stressful part of solo travel for a visually impaired person is being left alone without a guide or point of reference. I have been left twice. The first time I was actually at the original boarding gate. However, the gate was changed and in spite of initial reassurances that I wouldn’t be forgotten, I was! I became agitated when I heard the final call for my flight and I wasn’t on it! When I managed to flag someone down, everyone was most apologetic.

The second time I was left alone at the end of a tunnel in Toronto. There was to be an exchange of guides but the first guide left me and the second one didn’t show up. Knowing that I could have easily wandered out onto the tarmac, there was great consternation when a baggage handler finally found me. Both of these instances were prior to 9-11 and the additional security following that date.

When I write of horror stories, I instantly recall hearing of the young woman who was left on the aircraft after the plane had landed. She was told to wait in her seat and someone would assist her after all the other passengers had disembarked. This is the usual practice. However, nobody came and the next thing the woman heard was the air circulation shutting down and the doors closing. She was alone and indeed stayed that way for several hours until the maintenance crew came along to clean the plane. Now that is a horror story to beat most tales of woe. Personally, I think that she should have been given a free travel pass for life but I understand that she did at least get an apology.

My friend, Norma, told me of her strange experience. Norma was travelling with her guide dog and in spite of showing her travel documents several times to ground agents and officials while being guided to her flight, she was put on the wrong aircraft.  Norma protested at the time, but nobody seemed to listen. However, before takeoff, there was a great kafuffle and another blind passenger was led onto the same plane with her guide dog. The ground crew had mixed up the two women and put the other passenger on Norma’s flight. While Norma is Caucasian and of average height, the other passenger was a petite Asian woman. Both were travelling to entirely different destinations but both had guide dogs. Yes, just because we are blind, does not mean that we are all the same!

I think that in some instances it could be quite stressful to travel with a canine guide. Just last spring, my friend Sue was led on board to find that the seat numbers were different from the ones she had booked. There simply wasn’t enough space under the seat for her guide dog. The crew was unhelpful and both Sue and Button became agitated and stressed. Finally, when Sue stood up and declared that she simply couldn’t fly with the airline arrangements, a double seat was found in the rear of the plane. By this time, Button was just as stressed as Sue and simply refused to move from the place where she had collapsed in the aisle. As a last resort, the pilot himself came back and carried the dog to the new seat. Sue has great trepidations about flying again.

Well, some of you had asked, and so these were a few of the horror stories I referred to. I could go on, but I think that you get the drift.

Please, if you are travelling and see a white cane or guide dog traveller, don’t be afraid to offer assistance. Although I don’t always need the extra help, I am always grateful for the offer.