Tuesday did happen. I think the word is more survived than thrived, but success is success isn’t it? Homeschooling is about the only area of life that improves with this new normal of not seeing. You see, if one’s mom is the teacher, and limited in what else she can accomplish, and she taught forever before she homeschooled, she can almost recite every lesson from memory.
We are learning that our boys can and will sweep, mop, and load the dishwasher with minimal complaining. Les is amazing with the going to the store for me enroute home etc. The funny moments come too, like when our four labs and powder puff dogs open their way into the house and I don’t see them coming. They are always on the prowl for doors left unlocked and Drake will open the handles for them.
Phone conversations are sweet, but there is this problem of if a child has moved the phone….I simply can’t find things that are out of place, no matter how logical the place is. I find that I don’t venture very far from my desk to the couch to my room on my own….after that its like going through a fun house of shin hits, corners I didn’t expect and a feeling of “get me home” back to my spaces.
My eyes definitively dry out if not moistened by an hour later. At night we use a heavier medication but we generally still have to get up in the night to make sure the corneas don’t dry out again …its easy to tell, if they are dry blinding pain returns, light sensitivity happens, and she gets fussy…..its a comedy…you need lights to do the medicene, the lights huts the eyes that need the medicene, and the husband does his best to help.
Today we’re having an adventure. Long ago I agreed to cook spaghetti for a church event…and sure enough, they are bringing me the raw ingredients to cook today, so we will have our own adventure. Madison will help and we are both spaghetti proficient. They will pick it up as well, so I don’t have to find it a taxi.
If being domestically challenged was already one of my proficiencies, vision impairedness makes for a whole new level of value in learning how tnot to be. Thankfully I had just rearranged my filing system a few weeks ago, so necessary paperwork has been easy to find. I have a friend who continually sends me links to look at, most of what I “look” at, I end up “listening to” through the accessibility options on our computers. The program is slow as molasses but you can have pages read to you.
We really do not notice others in most of our daily lives. My friend’s husband is facing a cancer diagnosis this month….they deal with it daily. My mother was ill for three years before her death, for the most part, we were alone with that reality. A friend of ours at church deals with pain daily from lupus and foot problems, yet we who are not facing that reality so blithely go forward without appreciation for what we do not face daily. I am aware this is an awfully inconvenient situation I am in, but I am also aware daily that my situation is going to pass, that it is painful, but manageable, that so many others deal with such harder things and I try very hard to keep a perspective of thankfulness.
One thing is clear to me. I will become purposefully more aware of those around me and how to alleviate their trials…..just because I am busy is no excuse not to reach out and help other people who need assistance, more importantly, how defeating it is to struggle alone…I would not wish that on anyone.
God is good.
