I have written about how my Husband who has been blind from
birth has really helped me to live in the sighted world as a person who lost
their vision overnight twenty years ago.
Hub has taught me so much and life with him, I’m complete.
We just understand each other. But there are still days times like today when I
completely forget he’s blind.
I got a jar from the fridge today and he asked me if I wanted
him to tell me what it was. I answered yes please. I held the jar up and got
frustrated as he said hand it to me so I can tell you what it is? I tutted as
if to say for goodness sake, can’t you see the label from there? He was a few
feet in front of me. Bless him, I believed for a few seconds that he could see…
I do that from time to time, if there is something I can’t see, I will hold it
up to him and ask him what it looks like or what is it if it’s some kind of
letter. How crazy is that?
Hub has never had his blindness labelled. We don’t know why
or how he can’t see. Poor love had his first operation when he was a tiny child
I think he said he was a year old. When he was about two or three, the Drs
requested for him to have glasses thinking that would encourage him to
see. He can stand in front of a window
with the sun shining in and he doesn’t see anything at all his eyes don’t even
hurt. He can stand under a light and again, nothing. With me, my eyes hurt in
the sun. sometimes I can see a white sheet in front of me when it’s sunny, but
then when it’s pitch black with no lights on at night at home, I still see a
white sheet. So, do I see sun from my window as in a white cloth over my eyes,
or is it my brain telling me it’s sunny and tricking me at nights? But with Hub, he says it’s like looking from
your elbow. So, imagine that. What can you see from your elbow? Go on, have a
look?
My heart breaks for Hub, not to have ever seen colours, or
what a face looks like. Even thinking of him as a child, something like a teddy
bear, I remember them being so cute. What is cute to Hub? A voice of a sweet
child I guess.
We often talk about our sight or lack of it. We ask each
other what is best. Never to have seen or to have seen and had it taken from
you.
We both agree that never to have had vision is better than
the hell I went through. Thankfully Hub didn’t have to ever go through that. It
was torture. Excruciating and the most terrifying time of my life.
But then I think to myself, but don’t speak my next thoughts
to Hub. I know what it is like to fall in love by sight, looking at someone across
a room and looking into his eyes feeling that electric between us. Seeing a
really handsome man and beautiful colours. Looking in the mirror and having
memories of colours still and what things look like.
As I said a few blogs back. If a miracle took place and Hub
was given sight. He was put in a room with only one chair in the middle of the
room, he wasn’t allowed to touch the chair, and asked what the object was, he
wouldn’t know. Obviously now as a blind person if he feels a chair he knows. He
would have to learn everything, where as I would know what everything was. But Hub
can do so much as a professional blind person as I call him that I have had to learn
and he has been my teacher.
So, what have I been able to teach him? This is what this
blog is about as I wrote some time ago what he has taught me as in walking how I
walk and how I can hear things now that I never knew were there before. I feel
things now I didn’t know how to feel.
When I was reunited with Hub after too many years, too many
mistakes and wrong paths in life, I naively thought I could tell him a colour
by describing it. Red for example. A warm colour. Like soft thick velvet. Like a
glass of something nice to drink at Christmas. Blue, the colour of the sky. A soft
colour, one you may wish to put a baby boy in. Yellow, the sun, a yolk of an
egg. A colour that makes you smile and makes you happy.
Well how stupid am I? I mean, saying red is a velvet colour.
So, what is that? Blue the colour of the sky or what you would put a baby in,
they are all words, they don’t make a blind person understand or see a colour
in their head. Yellow well, so it’s the colour of an egg yolk, and, what colour
is that? Words, that is all I used. It means nothing. I thought.
This year for the first time I has noticed a huge change in
Hub. When I got together with him all those years ago, I slowly threw out his
clothes and replaced them with more modern clothes. I quickly learned that wasn’t
a good idea, as something that looks modern doesn’t feel nice to him. He didn’t
care how fashionable he was or wasn’t. he wanted clothes to feel good as in
material. So, I firstly learned how to meet in the middle. Buying nice clothes
that felt nice. There is no good buying him a designer belt if it feels flat
and boring with an ordinary buckle. Or a shirt with a pattern on but it feels
just like a very plain shirt. Give it texture, lines, nice buttons anything. Give
the belt a nice buckle, pick a belt where the leather smells really good. Pick a
jacket that feels really nice, good quality but practical with pockets he can
put things in and know they are going to be safe on Tubes/trains/busses etc.
Matching colours was a must for me when I had sight. When I lost
my vision, I panicked. I was ashamed how I would look if something didn’t
match. For Hub, matching wasn’t on his to do list.
Now? oh, yes, he asks will this go with that and so on. Trouble
is, he doesn’t know what colours he’s handing to me and I don’t either. Now if
he was to say something do these grey trousers go with that brown shirt, I would
say no, not at all. Does that orange wallpaper match with that pink paint, absolutely
not? But to hold two items of clothing up to me and ask do they match? Em… so
when we get clothes, I have to remember what matches and what they feel like
and where in our robe I have placed them.
Now we have received those buttons I told you about some
weeks ago, I must use them. You use them with your iPhone. Sew the buttons on the
clothes and your iPhone remembers the
colour. So to start with, you do need the help of a sighted person.
Right now though, I have to use my iPhone either Be My Eyes
App or Tap Tap See. And even then, some weeks ago we bought a jacket for Hub. Our
friend was with us. She said it was black. When we got home, Hub took his phone
and saw what the labels said. It read the jacket was brown. Shock horror as he
doesn’t own brown shoes and knows I wouldn’t put black with brown. Also grey
with brown and the jacket was to wear for work, he has a few pairs of trousers
that are grey. Our Son came home. I asked him to see what colour the jacket was.
He said black. I called Be My Eyes where you talk to a live person. But it was
sunny in our room. With the sunlight, she thought it was grey. Remember it was
over the phone too. So, we learned it was brown, but it must be so dark it to
most people will look black.
We hope.
Even Hubs casual clothes now he confirms what he is wearing
matches. He used to show no interest in what colours I was putting on the walls, or hanging curtains. Now, he wants to
know and I have even caught him on websites checking out colours. He said to me
last week for the first time he is getting pride in what he wears. I’m so
pleased for him but know there is a fine line between being keen to pick out an
outfit and getting so stressed about it. I get frustrated and I know colours. And
sometimes by the time you get out your iPhone, download or open the application
and get it to read the colour, you have lost the will to go anywhere in your
nice outfit. Especially when the applications are sometimes wrong or, can take
three goes before you get it right.
He has an Apple watch. He likes to change the picture on it.
One time he wouldn’t have even thought of that. He now wants to style his hair.
At one time, anything went.
My Husband is super brainy, charming, beautiful and so kind,
but now has signs of a sighted person. He wants to look his best. He wants his
house to look nice. He wants his garden to have items in that match and don’t
clash. Like the seat in our front garden, it’s the same colour as our front
door and some markings in our drive. He bought an item of clothing last week on
line that he would never have worn. And a colour that is really daring. I am so
interested in this change. Our boy has noticed too and his response to it is
funny.
Even things like I have
my towels folded in a certain way, I found him last week putting the towels
away and when I went to check after him, expecting to rearrange them, they were
perfectly folded.
Now I need to get him to keep my sofa and chair cushions
nice in order. And when he learns that, he can teach our Son. Haha. That isn’t
a blind sighted thing, that is a man thing.
Sometimes when I am writing out a birthday or whatever card
for family or friends, I can tell he’s a little tense. Believe me, as am I. I wonder
firstly does the pen still work? Am I writing over already written words? But if
my pen works, and I manage to write where there is normally no words, then how good
is that? As for the address and stamp? Well, bottom lip syndrome… I can breathe
when I get a call to say thank you… or some recognition that it’s got to them.
When people call or text to say they got the card and thank
you for the nice message or whatever, I’m really pleased and Hub smiles, I can
tell he’s slightly proud of me.
So, I’m not too sure I can really teach him anything that
will make his life easier. But I hope to give him pride knowing he blends in
with the sighted world and is made to feel less of a different person. He feels
confident that he has a lovely house. When we are in a shop, I can get him out
of it as when I enter that shop, I try to go into my minds eye, memory
whatever. I see things in my head like watching the TV. Things we pass, I see
them so when it’s time to get out of the shop, then I can get us out, once on
the streets, over to him and his guide dog. Outside he is brilliant, inside is
my kind of task.
We are a team. A penny that was sliced in half many years
ago and has since been fixed and now we pass through the hands, pockets and
purses of life and we are complete.
© Fiona Cummings
