When we lived “there,” we lived on 10 acres that was about 1000 feet off the road. It was a reclaimed gravel pit, so the majority of the property had been clear-cut leaving a rim of trees around the perimeter. Though we did have neighbors, it was not readily apparent. You could hear them doing things like mowing the grass or running a saw or hammering on some DIY project, but you couldn’t see anything. (Yeah, I know…you’re thinking, “But, duh, you’re blind…of course you didn’t see anything.” Yes, I am aware of that. The “you” I am referencing is the proverbial “you” that encompasses the general population of life, and don’t be snarky, YOU knew what I meant).
This setting created a sense of (somewhat misguided, I’m sure) privacy such that I could be found in the yard in all sorts of dress, and undress, in the mornings letting the chickens out. Hair uncombed, face not washed…lest I scar you for life with the visual, I’ll stop here…but I think you get the gist. This was all fun and games until I accidentally locked myself out one morning in just my seersucker blue and white plaid robe…and nothing else…no shoes, no…uhm, well…nothing else, but I digress.
Along those lines, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Those of you who know me well will probably already know this, but for the rest of you I have an artificial eye. It is my left one. Someday I’ll write an entire post about life with an artificial eye, but for now, just know that I have one. I still have my own eye beneath the artificial one, but mine is shrunken, so the artificial one is kind of like a very thick contact lens that fits over my real eye and fills out the eyelid to look more normal. Like a contact lens, I take it out at night. You’re probably wondering, “What does that have to do with this post?” Keep your shirt on…I’m getting to that.
Along with an unwashed faced and uncombed hair, I would often head out to do chicken chores without my eye. It was private, right? Who cared? Who was I going to see (and who was going to see me) anyway?
Unlike “there,” “here” the typography is vastly different and very diverse, even as one drives along the highway within a rather short distance. In the particular place where we live, it is very open, and though there are scattered trees around us, they mostly grow up along seasonal creeks or other water sources and the density is sparse. As a blind person, this has been a bit of a challenge to wrap my head around.
Back “there” I could be standing in my front yard on 10 acres and know that my neighbor only a few hundred feet to the north couldn’t see a thing. “Here,” however, one can stand in the middle of 100 acres, and unless there is a ridge or a rise of some kind, you can see the neighbor “off aways” and he can see you. We currently live on 5 acres, and our house is close to the road. Though everyone around us also lives on acreage of some kind, the typography gives the entire road more of a “subdivision feel” than the row of farms it mostly is. Needless to say, this has been an adjustment for me.
One of the first mornings we lived here, my husband had gone back “there” and I was here by myself. I put on my usual (a little more than a robe, but not exactly publicly presentable) – and yes, I was “without eye” – and headed out the door to do my chicken chores.
I got about half way through, when I heard someone hailing me from the road. Remember my previous post about how neighborly the neighbors are? It was Darrel – the aforementioned Miss Ruth’s son-in-law. A myriad of thoughts raced through my as-yet-not-properly-coffeed brain. I could pretend I didn’t hear him. Nope, his hail was clearly audible. To pretend not to hear him would leave everyone believing I was not only blind, but also deaf. I could pretend that he was hailing someone else. Nope, given that it was very early in the morning and we live in Council (outside of Council even), there wasn’t exactly a crowd of folks around. Maybe I could?… Nope. If you know me, you know I am fond of saying, “Suck it up, Buttercup,” so I heeded my own advice. I put on my best smile (not too big, because I hadn’t yet brushed my teeth), and strolled across the yard to greet my neighbor, droopy eyelid and all. Gracious to a fault, Darrel never said a word and proceeded to make sure I knew they were across the road giving me their phone number should I need anything while my husband was gone and I was home alone. Despite his lack of obvious notice of my general condition, one can’t help but wonder if he was thinking to himself, “…and clearly this lady needs supervision, because it’s painfully obvious that she can’t even dress herself appropriately to leave the house.” Now, I at least make sure I am fully clothed and have combed my hair and washed my face and, oh yeah, put in my eye before heading out to do chicken chores. I have run into Darrel on several occasions, as well as both Darrel and his wife Ann, so I am hopeful that I have dispelled the first impression of total incompetence created that first day.
When we lived “there,” we never had window coverings, because we loved the light coming in and the views looking out, and it was private. When we first got “here,” I never thought about window coverings, because we were on acreage, and in my mind, acreage meant privacy, so who needed window coverings?
To the west, our property borders the Weiser River Trail – a non-motorized trail that is actually fairly heavily traveled, relatively speaking, and people often pass by our house on foot or on horseback headed for the trail to recreate.
As is the case with most of us operating within the privacy of our own homes, I can periodically be found streaking across the living room straight from the shower in search of the laundry basket or venturing into the kitchen to make coffee in just a t-shirt. My husband had assured me that – despite our lack of window coverings – I was safe…no one could see me inside the house.
But then one evening we were sitting at our kitchen table in front of the kitchen window, and I could tell my husband had made some kind of unusual move. “What are you doing?” I asked him. “Waving at Darrel,” he replied. I didn’t think too much about it until a few days later we were once again at the kitchen table when he commented on someone walking by on the road, noting the tiny mole they had on their cheek and the tiny little rose they had tattooed on their inside left wrist. Okay, okay…I’m “embellishing” just a bit, but he did make a comment that indicated he could see a lot more detail about the folks passing by than I would be comfortable with, assuming they could see the same level of detail looking in. Though he patiently explained to me that it was bright outside and darker inside which meant that we could see much more looking out of the darker side into the brighter side than the other way around, I decided it was time for window treatments nonetheless. Now, if I can just remember to close them.