(A NEW START)
It’s the new year a new start. A full 12 months before the
end of the year and at the end of this year, I hope you can smile with the
knowledge that you have achieved a personal goal. Something that may be small
but will make a difference to your life and moreover make you feel so proud of
yourself. Let this year be uplifting for you. Start now, not next week or
month, but right now it doesn’t have to be an enormous change in your life. I have
been talking via email with someone who has been procrastinating with regards
learning how to use the white cane. He wants this year to be his year where he
can say he did it, no one else, but him.
Right now, he is sitting at home all of the time very
depressed going nowhere. Doing nothing. Feeling rock bottom. He has been
offered white cane training by Guide Dogs in England but has refused training. Why?
So many reasons I can empathise with.
1, doesn’t want to admit that he has finally got to face
fact, he isn’t safe to walk outside without help
So, what does he do?
Stays in instead. It’s safer and sometimes safe is comfortable. But his
frustration and depression will manifest in a lifestyle that isn’t healthy for his
mind. To step out of his comfort zone from time to time in the long run, is a much
better end result that I for one need to work on and I will do it, together
with you.
2, He worries about
what his neighbours will think of him with a white cane. Stuff what everyone
else thinks. Where are they when he needs help? Where are they when he has a
full week in the house without going anywhere and he hears his neighbours
outside talking about a night out or a day out as a group? Do they knock on
him? Answer no, mainly because he has become so invisible and whether we like
it or not, some sighted people do shy away from those who are blind, unless
they have an educated open mind.
Getting over that awful barrier which you may think is an impossibility
right now, can be one of the best feelings you will ever have.
I will never forget the first time I went out with my cane
trainer outside in the big bad world. Only those who have been in my shoes will
know how I felt. I was so red with shame embarrassment, whatever it is, my face
felt as if I had spent a long time under a sunlamp. Seriously it was so bad. My
teeth gritted together. My heart was pounding beating so fast I was sure it
could be seen through my t-shirt. Every person in my street was looking out
from their windows. Calling each other on the phone telling one another about
me. Sharing notes with each other. Well I wanted to find a huge hole and crawl
into it.
In reality, no one actually saw me. Seriously, I couldn’t
believe it. A couple of days later when I was out with my ex, no one said a
thing about my cane from two days previous. Hmm. They were being polite, right?
Actually no. a week later when I had my training and went to school to pick up
my child for the first time worry stress and danger free, all the Mothers many
of which lived in my street, came up to me and asked how long I had been blind.
I’m not joking. I told them for four years. They were shocked. I know or knew
they had never seen me that day, the day I was sure they were all looking. Once
they had seen me it was like some kind of power that was given to me. I was
free. I didn’t have to feel where I was going because believe it or not, I had
gone to pick up my child after taking him to school for a full year without a
cane or a guide dog. I was in denial. I was not blind, forever. My vision was
going to come back. But in the meanwhile, I had to have cane training, as my
poor boy was suffering because of my lacking in admission into my blindness
that left me crippled.
My Son now could enjoy school without having to worry about
his Mum getting home after dropping him off at school. I could relax if I got a
call to say my Son was ill or I had to go to a school meeting, I could now, I didn’t
need to have sleepless nights wondering how on earth I would get my child to
school. I had my cane. Other people were not there to help and even though
letters were sent out from the school to parents who walked their children to
the same school, same route as me, asking if they would assist a blind parent,
the school receiving no answers not one person said yes out of seventeen mothers
and fathers. My name wasn’t written on the letters. Just a parent. Well when
they learned who the parent was, they were shocked. Apart from one Mother who
used to offer me lifts to children’s birthday parties, there was no help so,
thank God for my white cane. Even when I made friends at the school gates,
still there was a fear of volunteering to walk with me to things like kid’s
parties and school plays. I mean, have you ever thought what it’s like to walk
into your child’s school hall, huge room and try to find a seat without any
vision at all? Especially when you know that there are seats with reservations
on them.
I could take my child to the hair dressers to get his hair
cut after school. We could go to the park and to the shops afterwards. Thanks
to my cane. My new best friend.
Of late, I have been reading about sighted wives and
Husbands who just don’t understand what the white cane is all about. It’s not a
miracle it doesn’t see for us or have some kind of Satellite Navigation built
in it. It’s a stick. That’s all. But once a mobility instructor programs our
brains to learn routes, and shows us just how to hold the correct cane that is
perfect for us, as they are not all the same height or have the same design,
then we are good to go, but put us in a strange environment, or a noisy place,
then we are as blind as we are without a cane. We need to know our route. Because we are just like you, wrap a
blindfold around your eyes of course take away the fear factor as you have the
luxury of being able to remove your blindfold where as we don’t have that choice.
And step outside, walk to the shops, your child’s school, your place of work,
can you? No? why not? See, we really are just like you.
© Fiona Cummings
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