[Blindtlk] {Spam?} RE: how about painting?

[Julie J.]

Thanks!  I loved this article.  I felt the same way when I was trying 
pressure canning for the first time.  And my son did the same thing!  LOL  I 
guess that's a good thing.

The room I am painting will be my new home office space.   It will be so 
nice to have the bigger room.  I was talking to a blind friend of mine about 
this project.  He immediately asked if my sighted husband was doing the 
painting.  When I said that I was doing the painting he immediately started 
in on how blind people just sometimes need to accept that we cannot do 
everything.   I agree, but how do I know what I can and can't do unless I 
try?  Of course with always keeping safety in mind.  I'm not trying driving 
a school bus. This is painting and the worst that can happen is that I make 
a huge mess and have ugly walls.

I find that I need to challenge myself and my beliefs about what I can do on 
a regular basis.   It keeps me from becoming complacent about my life.

Julie
Courage to Dare: A Blind Woman's Quest to Train her Own Guide Dog is now 
available! Get the book here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QXZSMOC
-----Original Message----- 
From: Gary Wunder via blindtlk
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2016 8:14 PM
To: 'Blind Talk Mailing List'
Cc: Gary Wunder
Subject: [Blindtlk] {Spam?} RE: how about painting?

For whatever help it might be, I volunteer my wife to talk with you. What 
she wrote about painting is below and she can be reached at 
debbiewunder at centurytel.net.
The Gift
by Debbie Wunder

All of our children's birthdays are special, but some more than others. When 
my youngest daughter Abbey was about to turn ten, I asked her to think hard 
about what she wanted on her special occasion. She said she would be happy 
if we could redecorate her room, buy her some new clothes, or get her a 
GameCube. "Which of those do you really want" was the question I asked her, 
and she thought through the choices. She knew I wasn't enthused about a 
GameCube, since I’d already warned her that her game time could not cut into 
her reading time. She was old enough to know that winter was coming and that 
new clothes were something she was likely to get whether they were on her 
birthday list or not. Eventually she answered: "I want to fix up my room and 
paint it in mixed colors." I immediately thought about the cost of 
repainting. For a moment I felt  sadness and regret for offering something I 
might not be able to afford. But after my initial shock I began to feel 
excited. Here is why: I have an addiction; it is not to chocolate, drugs, or 
alcohol—well okay, maybe a slight addiction to chocolate. But the addiction 
I am speaking of is HGTV, the Home and Garden Television Network. I can 
spend hours watching programs such as Design on a Dime, Trading Spaces, or 
just about any fix-it-up show they carry. One of my strengths has always 
been arts and crafts. A wonderful possibility was taking shape in my head 
and my heart: I could give my daughter something more than a gift off a 
store shelf—I could give her a gift that showed my love, my talent, and my 
creativity. Her tenth-birthday gift would be something she would treasure 
for a long time to come. I decided that I would do it on my own, my way of 
providing a very special gift to her.
I told Abbey that fixing up her room would be her present, and I anxiously 
began to plan the project. We made a trip to the paint store to choose her 
colors. I told her to pick three that would complement one another. I 
already knew that her first choice would be some shade of pink. I was right; 
she chose a color called “passionate pink,” otherwise known as Pepto-Bismol 
pink. The other two were a slightly lighter shade of pink and purple. She 
asked what I was going to do with three different colors, and I told her 
this would be part of her surprise.
>From HGTV I learned that you need one wall to be the focal point. It can 
contain a piece of artwork or furniture, or the focal point can be the wall 
itself. I could not afford to buy new furniture, and neither did I have an 
eye-popping piece of artwork, so it would have to be the painted wall that 
made the room. I had a good idea what could make that wall the focal point 
if only I could figure out how to do it: I remembered Abbey telling me that 
one day she would like to travel with me to Mexico to see a mountaintop that 
is filled with beautiful butterflies in the winter. This provided the 
inspiration, but could I possibly paint a wall of butterflies? Then it hit 
me: I realized I could use a large rubber stamp to stencil the image. I used 
two of the colors Abbey had chosen, painting one half of the butterfly in 
one color and the second half with the other. Those contrasting colors would 
make the butterflies stand out.
When the weekend before her special day drew near, I went out and got the 
other items I would need. I also arranged for Abbey to   visit a friend for 
a slumber party and made plans to paint her room.
The night before she left, Abbey began questioning me about how I was going 
to redecorate. It was clear that she was skeptical but didn't want to show 
it. Some of her skepticism was whether an adult could do the kind of 
makeover a ten-year-old would want, but some was because my husband Gary and 
I are blind. Painting is not something blind people typically do, and Abbey 
was worried about what she would return to at the end of her weekend. I 
reminded her that we did all kinds of things that others thought blind 
people couldn't do and asked if I had ever disappointed her or broken a 
promise. "No, Mommy," was her reply, but her tone was less confident than 
her words. "Will Megan help you?" Megan is one of Abbey’s older sisters, and 
Abbey has always adored her, respected her judgment, and admired her 
honesty.
"No, I am going to do the job myself, but of course Megan will want to take 
a look once it is done, and we all know how Megan always gives her honest 
opinion.” I assured Abbey that I knew what I was doing, told her to have a 
good weekend, and once again promised she'd be happy with her room when she 
returned.
The initial steps were easy. The first thing I did was remove all the switch 
plates and socket covers. I then taped around all of the woodwork, door 
frames included. I probably used more tape than necessary, but I wanted to 
protect the woodwork and thought that I might get to it  faster when I was 
painting than  someone who could see. Then I put tape between the walls and 
the ceiling. I put plastic on the floor, unwrapped the brushes and the 
rollers, got out the cans of paint and a couple of paint trays, and closed 
the door to the room I would soon turn into my daughter's dream place.
But when it came time to open that paint, put it on the roller, and start 
painting the wall, I  fell apart inside. The thought of painting the room 
energized me; the thought of taking that brush in hand and messing up an 
already painted wall terrified me. Could I follow through to create 
something worthy of my daughter's tenth birthday, or would I create a tenth 
birthday memory that would shame us all? I sat down on a stool and began  to 
cry. I was a sweating, shaking, crying mess, and I couldn't think of any 
easy way out of what I had committed to do.
Then my cell phone rang, and my older daughter Megan said she was dropping 
by to see how the room was coming. I started to tell her I was at my wits' 
end and was paralyzed by doubt, and then it came to me: God was delivering a 
response to my unvoiced prayer. Megan was coming over. She could help. I 
would do my share, but she would be there to do the hard parts, to supervise 
my work, and to make sure I didn't mess things up. I could still deliver on 
my promise, and no one would have to know how scared I had been of failing.
When she arrived, Megan could see that I had done all the preparation but 
hadn't yet started on the wall. I told her I was nervous about the project, 
and I suggested we have a girl's night, order a pizza, laugh about some 
memories and stories, catch up with one another, and together  create a gift 
her sister would love. She was not enthusiastic about spending the evening 
together, reminding me that it was Friday and that she already had plans 
with her friends. Again I began to feel panic, and it showed. Noticing my 
imminent meltdown, Megan began to repeat back to me things I had said to her 
since she was a baby. She reminded me that I had told her I could do 
anything I set my mind to and that blindness only made the way I did a thing 
different—not better, not worse, just different. She said that I had always 
been as good as my word, that I had never let my family down, and that she 
was so proud of the mom I was. She told me that there was no way I'd let 
Abbey down, that I was perfectly capable of painting that room, and that I 
needed to put myself back together, remember how much I loved to do artsy 
craftsy things, and that, by the end of the weekend, we'd all have something 
to treasure. I heard what she said, and, although they were nice words that 
were exactly what I had dreamed she would one day say to me about raising 
her, my fear held fast, and I begged her to stay and help.
After listening to my pathetic protests, Megan turned to me and said, "Okay, 
I'll help you," and immediately she went for the paint can and the roller. 
She dipped the roller into the can, and I gave a big sigh of relief when I 
heard paint being applied to the wall. We would do this together. I could 
hand her brushes and pour paint into the trays, but she could do the 
painting, and we'd do a great job together. But my elation was short-lived. 
The next thing I heard was the roller being placed back in its tray and 
Megan saying, "Okay, Mom. I've started it. It's your turn. Bye!"
I laughed, and in a shaking voice I said, "Oh Megan, don't tease me. I don't 
think I can take it tonight."
"I'm not teasing," she said. "Mom, this is Friday night, and I have plans. 
You told Abbey you could do this, and you can. You've been planning it for 
two months. This is only paint; you can't break anything. Now get to it, and 
I'll come by tomorrow to see how you're doing. Bye. Love you." With a hug 
and a kiss, out the door she went.
Again I was alone, but now Abbey's wall, which had been an off-white color, 
had a big pink stripe across it. There was no turning back. Eventually I 
pulled myself together, thought about what Megan had said, said a silent 
prayer for God's help, and started to paint. I painted all that night and 
much of the next day. I used a specially-made stamp to place the imprint of 
butterflies on the wall, being careful to ensure that each went on at a 
slightly different angle to give the appearance of the butterflies in 
flight. I had to be careful about their spacing since being too close 
together or too far apart would ruin the intended effect.
When Saturday night came, I was a boiling mix of emotions: exhausted, 
exhilarated, proud, scared, anxious for Megan to return and give me her 
always painfully honest opinion, and afraid of what she might say. When she 
entered the room, I felt as tense as I have ever felt. “Hey, Mom, it looks 
great! This will be the best present ever. Abbey will be so excited."
Again I began to cry, but these were not tears of fear but tears of relief. 
When Abbey came home on Sunday and looked at her room, the joy she felt 
wasn't conveyed just in what she said but in her tone. She kept saying," 
Thank you, Mommy, oh thank you, Mommy. This is the best birthday present 
ever!" After all the fear, all the anxiety, all the concern that I had 
pushed too hard, promised too much, I felt supremely happy. There wasn't one 
trace of surprise or amazement in her little voice—just appreciation for a 
promised birthday gift that was exactly what she had asked to receive. Again 
I cried. This time I shed tears of joy—I had given my ten-year-old a gift 
she would remember for the rest of her life. I had done what I said I 
would—just as she expected I would do.
We always tell people that blindness poses two problems: one is the physical 
lack of sight, the other the reaction that we and others have to being 
blind. A big part of what we do in the National Federation of the Blind 
involves changing the attitudes of the public with the words we say and the 
actions they can see, but it is hard to measure something as large as a 
change in public acceptance. What we can more easily see is the reality our 
children come to know as we tell them what we believe about blindness, and 
they then compare those words with what they see day after day and year 
after year. My daughter Megan believed what I told her about the role 
blindness played in my life, and she accepted as true what I said about 
being able to do anything. She then reflected or echoed back that belief to 
me at a time when I was down on myself and was questioning whether I had 
promised to do something beyond my capabilities. So certain was she that I 
could succeed that she placed me on a road that ran in only one 
direction—forward—and left me alone to navigate that road by myself.
The Bible tells us that it is more blessed to give than to receive, and I am 
a living example of that truth. To my daughter that newly decorated room was 
something she enjoyed, treasured, and proudly showed her friends. But soon 
she was no longer ten and wanted a bigger room downstairs. Now she is in 
college, the newly decorated room a treasured but distant memory. But for me 
the picture of that room will always remain in my mind, and the 
accomplishment it represents often reminds me that I can do more than I 
think I can, that I should encourage others to go beyond what they think 
they can do, and that sometimes discomfort is a necessary ingredient in 
finding the joy of real accomplishment. Blindness almost stopped me from 
giving my youngest daughter the best gift I've ever given, but it was my 
older daughter's faith, her belief in my ability, and her reluctance to 
accept anything less than my best that has made this one of the most 
treasured stories of my life.


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