When I first met my wife, I was instantly attracted. She was tall and slender, with long brown hair and intense gray eyes—eyes that seemed to hold a secret only I could decipher. I was twenty-seven and a determined romantic. Karen was handing out leaflets at a peace rally outside Northrup Auditorium. We started talking. I don’t know what got into me. I mean, I was usually pretty shy around women, but I asked her to have coffee with me when she was done. It all seemed so easy, so effortless, kind of like sledding down a snowy hill. By the time I got to the bottom and was able to stand on level ground, look squarely at what I’d done, it was two years later and we were married.
If Karen hadn’t been pregnant with our first child, I probably would have left her. But when my son came along, everything changed. Not with the marriage, but with me. I finally had a purpose in my life. I believe I truly fell in love for the first time. My daughter followed a couple of years later. The marriage was never good, but my kids made it bearable. I feel bad now for the way I handled things. Maybe I should have ended the marriage, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that to my children, and so ultimately I guess I made a mess of everything. For many years, my life revolved around teaching and family. But that’s all behind me now. After such a noisy life, I had no idea this much silence existed in the world—so much space between a question and an answer. My days of working with kids had become ancient history. Or so I thought.
The morning it all started, the clock on the nightstand beeped at the usual 6 a.m. I reached over and flipped off the alarm. It was late October, and the light didn’t hit my windows until closer to 7. The way the sun came in and moved around my apartment had become very important to me. I hated waking up in the dark. I figured I had the rest of my life for that.
After breakfast, I took my usual shower. Next to the mirror in the bathroom I’d taped up a page I’d torn from a dictionary. When I moved to this apartment on Columbus a few months ago, I’d been able to read the words while I brushed my teeth.
For the past few weeks, I’d spent part of each day moving around my apartment with my eyes closed. I was practicing, as I’d been taught. You can’t go blind in Minnesota without being offered a lot of help—it’s the way Minnesotans are.
I’d been assigned a counselor to assist me with what they call “travel skill training,” another counselor for “daily living skills,” and I’d been given a list of therapists who could help me with the emotional aspects of going blind. We pay a lot of taxes, so we should get something other than the damn politicians for our money. Don’t get me started on state politics.
I spent that morning in the kitchen, rearranging the cupboards for the third time. Everything had to be logical, and it took awhile to figure out what that was. I had a lot of memorizing to do before the lights went out for the last time. Nobody could predict when it would happen, but it wasn’t far off. By early afternoon, I was sitting on the couch next to a bright reading light with a family album in my lap, my glasses resting on my nose and a magnifying glass in my hand. There was so much I wanted to burn into my memory—mainly, the faces of my children, the good times we had together.
Speaking of my kids, they don’t like me much right now. Or more accurately, they both seem to be afraid of me—for different reasons.
My daughter is engaged to a man who has the body of an anorexic stork and a stretched, rubbery face that reminds me of the rooster in the cartoon movie,
Cary, that’s my daughter’s name, is afraid of me and her mother at the moment because she doesn’t want to be reminded that love sometimes fails. I guess I understand. My son comes by occasionally, but I can always tell that he’s watching me when he thinks I’m not looking. He’s afraid of some inner biology that will cause him to end up like his old man—blind and alone. Instead of their father, I’ve morphed into a gloomy omen. I hope they get over it—for their sake as much as mine.
