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What Do You See If You Are Blind Can you hear a smile? Have you ever heard that certain quality in a friend's voice that says that he is lonely? Can you tell from your mother's footsteps that she has had a very stressful day? Do you ever listen for that certain something in a friend's laugh that tells you your friend is laughing to cover up his sadness? For my entire life, I have been totally blind. Now, before you say to yourself something like "Isn't that awful?" or "Boy! he must miss a lot," stop and think for a minute. You see my blindness as it might seem to you if, all of a sudden, you were no longer able to see. Let's make no bones about it, that would be a most devastating occurrence. I, on the other hand, have never known what it is to see with my eyes. So, I make do with my other senses. I "see" with my hands, my ears, my nose, and my mouth. If you really stop and think about it, it's a wonderful way to look at things. In my world, there are no pimples, no one is fat, no person I know has any kind of physical deformity, and we are all the same color. To say that every person who is blind looks at life in this way would be far from the truth. Some, who do not see with their eyes, have been very influenced by a visually-oriented society which sets forth the virtues of physical beauty so emphatically that all other senses pale against the beauty that can be seen with the eyes. Growing up blind in such a world is extremely disappointing and often downright painful. To be unaware of, or unable to see, the beauty around you because of a physical disability is a fate which often makes some persons very bitter about life itself. To be sure, I grew up in a visually-oriented society. Social scientists have said that as much as 80 percent of what we perceive is perceived with our eyes. For me, somehow, the road took a turn and ran along another path. Perhaps, in the pages that follow, we can both discover why. My mind drifts back now to those long, hot afternoons on the riverbank with my father. "What's that sound, Daddy?" I would ask. And he would put down his fishing pole and go in search of the cause of an unknown noise. Sometimes he'd be lucky, and my childhood curiosity would be appeased by the discovery of yet another bird, or cricket, or frog. But most of the time, he never found it. Creatures of the forest have a way of becoming quite invisible when you are trying to find them. I also remember the times I would ask those hard, perplexing questions about life as I understood it as a six year old boy. "Daddy," I would ask, "why do trains run on tracks, and what does a train look like anyway?" To a six year old boy, trains can be the extremely important stuff that dreams are made of and daddys like mine always seemed to understand that. One of the earliest recollections I have of my father is the touch of his hand on mine as he handed me a train which he made with modeling clay because he wanted me to see a train in my mind's eye. Those very rough, weather worn hands, acquired from many years of hard labor in the factory where he worked, knocked at the door of my consciousness in a very strange and perplexing way. His hands were so large, so rough, and so full of power, and yet, they were so very gentle as they handed me that crude model of a train. I know it sounds strange, but there was something in his touch that seemed to say that he was sorry it wasn't a better train. There was something in the way he placed it in my hand that made me know that this large, quiet, man, making hardly enough money to feed his family, would spend every penny he had to buy me a real train if I had asked for one. "But, it will never run on a track," he would say. He was wrong. In my dreams at night, it carried me with it to far off, wonderful places where I could have never gone without it. I can still smell the smoke coming from the engine as it climbed the mountains near my home. I can still hear the far away, haunting whistle echoing off the frozen stillness of a winter's night. I can still feel the rumble of the wheels beneath my feet as it sped toward some unknown place. "But he can't see the train," I remember hearing a childhood friend say. For many years, I remembered but did not really understand, my father's reply. "Oh, yes he can." And then there was my mother who, much to my family's amazement, would allow me to play on the front porch near the edge of the steps that went down into the yard. "What are you doing?" my grandmother would ask. "He could fall down those steps and break his neck, and you're not close enough to stop him." "Yes," my mother would say, "that could certainly happen." But she was also quick to point out the other two possibilities. "He could sit there helplessly waiting for one of us to take him down the steps, or he could figure out how to get to the bottom on his own. I love him enough to be willing to take that chance." For as long as I can remember, my mother has delighted in telling people that she never once saw me fall down a flight of steps. I don't believe I ever have. The following pages are written in celebration of that unexplainable something my parents had that transcended the world of my blindness and set me free from a constant longing for sight. Although neither of them was lucky enough to graduate from high school, their love for me and their common sense approach to life gave me the ability to "see" the beauty which is all around me. I also write these pages in appreciation of my sighted friends who have allowed me to see much of the world through their eyes. For years, they have described for me the things I cannot see. They have talked of giant skyscrapers, ocean waves, mountains, works of art, rivers, trees, animals, birds, ships, planes, clouds, and people. Although there are many things I can touch in a way that will give me a perception of their totality, other things remain literally outside my reach except as they are described by sighted friends. A cathedral spire is too large to be felt at one time, even if you were able to reach it from the ground. And an amoeba may have never been discovered in a world of totally blind inhabitants. For just as many years, I have been describing to my sighted friends the things their eyes have sometimes overlooked: the laughter heard in the footsteps of a child, the loneliness and pain apparent in the voice of a friend, or the special beauty that can be sensed when you close your eyes and touch a tree, a moss covered rock, or the delicate pedals of a newly opened blossom. It has been, I think, a fair trade. Their words have taken me to places I would have never gone without them, and mine have opened doors which they may not have thought to look behind. The following suggestions for "seeing" life with our other senses have come from behind some of those doors. They are offered here in grateful appreciation to all my friends whose words of explanation have allowed me to almost touch the stars.