Once, It Was A Book About Blindness, And I Still Think About It A Lot

8.2.22

75 degrees and I ran past two people waiting for a bus and one person opening a downtown shop. Then, in the bookstore window, there was a book about 1,000 places to visit in North America—a bucket list kind of book—and rounding the corners before the bridge, gas was $4.76 a gallon. Then I ran home.

Now here on the back porch with Simon, small items to report from yesterday includes eating a pint of ice cream on the front porch (a new, chocolate milk and cookies flavor) and picking up Carter from his Two Day sleepover at a friend’s house. Then, I also made another batch of Buffalo chicken dip for the boys because they had been clamoring for it, and I restocked the soda fridge. Then that was that.

In other news, I should mentioned I finished Frank Bruni’s new book, The Beauty of Dusk, the other day. I found it when I was wandering around a public library that was not my own. (Book Photo Below)

I should mention here I read Frank Bruni in The NY Times a lot, which is a habit I’ve had for a while, even way back in 2017, which is when the story begins, as that’s when Bruni wrote a column entitled “Am I Going Blind?” and I ended up thinking about it every few seconds of every day for quite a while after reading it back then.

The gist—in 2017–being Bruni woke one Saturday morning with a fog in his right eye. At first he thought it was from too much wine at a dinner party the night before. Then he thought it was his glasses, and he kept cleaning them. Then he thought it was his computer screen, so he kept cleaning that. Then he realized it was not going away, and after a diagnosis, Bruni learned he had a stroke while he slept. The stroke damaged the nerve that connects his eye to brain, and not only was the damage permanent, there was a very real possibility of it happening to the other eye at any time.

Fast forward to today, and Bruni has adapted to being legally blind in one eye and accepted the possibility he could wake up permanently blind any given morning. His book recounts his practical and emotional journey he’s taken to get to this point, and he interviews other people—many also living with varying degrees of blindness—and captures their stories of initial sorrow soon followed by resiliency and accomplishment.

And so people are like starfish, Bruni concludes—better than starfish actually—-as while starfish can regrow limbs, it’s human beings who can rewire their entire brains and psychological outlooks to adapt to the most challenging of circumstances, and the data suggests this is the norm and not simply the feel-good exception of heroic outliers.

Bruni attests to this with his own challenges, and he recounts his own experiences with both sensory compensation and a renewed outlook on both his own life and the lives of others.

Case in point: Bruni explains most people don’t even know he has no sight in his right eye because it appears undamaged. This led him to consider a “sandwich board” perspective of others, where he images how he would treat others if their own invisible trials were written on a sandwich board they carried around instead of being hidden.

For example, his sandwich board would read “Blind in right eye, May go blind in other eye any day.” Meanwhile, a stranger’s might read, “Unemployed, wife diagnosed with cancer.” Another person’s might read, “Lives with chronic pain, estranged from daughter.” The point being, we never really know what other people are silently suffering/soldiering through, and it reminded me of the maxim that when you meet a new person, treat them with dignity and imagine they are going through an unspoken serious hardship, and you’ll discover you’re right over half the time.

And so it was a really, really good book, and it made me more cognizant of both my own mortality and the trials of others. Then, it also reminded me to continue appreciating the little things, as Bruni admits to experiencing a renewed appreciation of nearly everything, even when it seems like he is in the process of losing so much.

So, #Publiclibrariesrock and all, and you should consider checking it out. As for now, though, my back porch time is up, and I gotta get inside and feed Simon his Blue Buffalo. Then it will be Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi and Coke Zero Sugar time with me and Holly, the boys will sleep in, and another day in August—and its very first Tuesday, mind you—will be ready to begin.