[NFBOH-Cleveland] I WAS A YOUNG MOTHER BEING STIFLED BY BLINDNESS, by Barbara Pierce

[Suzanne Turner]

I WAS A YOUNG MOTHER BEING STIFLED BY BLINDNESS

 

by Barbara Pierce

 

Wife of a college professor, mother of three children, career woman, civic
leader all of these terms apply to Barbara Pierce, the President of the
National

Federation of the Blind of Ohio. She did not achieve the poise and
self-confidence that she possesses today without going through a period of
soul-searching

and doubt. The National Federation of the Blind was a key factor in helping
her find her way. So were her own introspection and self-analysis. Here is

how she remembers it.

 

In 1973 I was twenty-eight years old and a faculty wife living in a small
midwestern town with my loving husband and three small children.

 

The main complication in my life was my blindness. My vision had
deteriorated since childhood, and even though I had been introduced to
Braille and the

white cane as a teenager, I could still use my vision for some things, so I
told myself I was not really blind. Since college, though, I had had to
admit

that my eyes now provided me with almost no useful information except which
lights were on.

 

Despite the profound handicap of vision loss, I grew up in a happy family
with a younger brother who was understanding of the extra time my parents
spent

working with me. They were truly amazing people.

 

Dad was easy-going and positive. Lots of homework? No problem; we'd dig our
way through it no regret at sacrificing his quiet evening. As an engineer he

had no difficulty with the science and math, but German and diagramming
sentences presented challenges to us both.

 

In the fifties there was little academic support for families whose blind
children attended public schools. We were on our own to devise alternative
methods

of doing my work. So I diagrammed sentences in the air for Dad to transcribe
onto paper and learned to do complex algebra in my head.

 

My mother was far more distressed about my blindness. Being a mother, she
worried. Having an active conscience, she wondered if she were somehow
responsible

for my condition. I was dimly aware of her pain, but she never let it stand
in the way of my growing up.

 

I went camping with the Girl Scouts, learned to cook and iron, and did my
share of household chores. She never communicated her anxiety about my
safety.

She taught me about colors, make-up, and doing my hair. She saw to it that I
learned to dress appropriately even though I couldn't tell what other people

were wearing, and she suffered with me when the boys I liked ignored me or
treated me like a sister. My senior year she first rejoiced with me and then

began worrying again when I fell in love.

 

Thanks to my parents' support, I graduated second in my suburban high school
class. I entered Oberlin College the following September and for the first

time in my life had to face the prospect of getting my work done without a
full-time reader/secretary at my disposal.

 

I learned quickly about hiring and supervising readers, and I worked hard.
But I played hard too, taking part in college organizations and dating,
though

my heart was still entangled with my high school flame, attending a college
far away.

 

The college campus was small and easy to memorize. I used a folding cane
that I could make vanish whenever someone presented her (or preferably)
himself

to walk with me to my destination. I wouldn't allow friends to go out of
their way for me, so I often didn't do social things or run errands I would
have

wanted to because I couldn't find anyone who was going that direction.

 

All that changed my senior year when I began to date one of my professors.
It was one of those whirlwind romances that are the talk of small,
close-knit

communities. I graduated from Oberlin with high honors in June and became a
faculty wife that September. I felt like a fairy-tale princess.

 

By 1973 Bob and I had bought a thirteen-room house that had originally been
a dormitory. It was close enough to campus for him to walk to his office and

for me to walk downtown and to the pediatrician, where I was going
frequently by this time because we had three children: Steven, five; Anne,
two; and

Margaret, born two months prematurely that August.

 

The things I was doing I could do well. My children were happy, my home was
as orderly as any with three small children, my husband's classes met often

in our living room and ate home-baked cookies.

 

But I was beginning to feel that my life was much more restricted than I
wanted it to be. I could not drive. I could not read print. I couldn't even
read

Braille very well because no one had ever encouraged me to work on building
my reading speed when I was young. I hated my cane and used it as little as

possible. It seemed to shriek to people of my blindness, and everyone knew
that blind people couldn't do much. They made brooms in sheltered workshops

or tuned pianos. They stood on street corners and sold pencils or, if they
were musical, played the accordion. I was not like that.

 

But what was I like? What could I do with myself? It was a question that I
could put off a little longer because the children were still small enough
for

me to pretend that I didn't yet want to go back to work.

 

Never during my struggles did I consider that other blind people might be
able to help me. Everyone had always told me that I was not like other blind

people. Since I had never known a blind person, I assumed that my friends
and family were right. I told myself that I was really a sighted person who
couldn't

see. I was normal, and nothing that blind people could say would have much
relevance to me because, even though my world was limited to the distance I

could walk and the information I could glean from my recorded books and what
my dear husband had time to read to me, I was not a shuffling, passive,
doggedly

cheerful blind puppet to be dragged around and handed whatever other people
no longer wanted.

 

Then, in January of 1974, someone brought me a stack of recordings produced
by the National Federation of the Blind. He said I might be interested in
listening

to them. I smiled politely and put them aside with no intention of wasting
my time on such twaddle. But very soon thereafter my husband had to be away

for a weekend, and the baby came down with her first cold. To complete my
misery, I had read and returned every one of the recorded books lent to me
by

the National Library Service for the blind and Physically Handicapped. I
faced the prospect of two days of walking a fussy baby and talking to two
toddlers

while having nothing to read. I remembered the stack of records and decided
that they were better than nothing.

 

When Bob came home Sunday afternoon, expecting to find a frantic,
ill-tempered wife, he found instead a woman who had been transformed. Poor
man, he had

to listen to the pent-up flood of discoveries that I had made. He is
patient, and he paid close attention as I explained that I had discovered
fifty thousand

people who believed that blindness didn't have to consign one to poverty and
helplessness. I had learned that as a member of the general public, I had

been brainwashed like everyone else about blindness. I realized that my
dislike of my cane was really rejection and denial of blindness. I had been
working

hard at doing things as well as sighted people not because blindness need
not be more than a nuisance in my life, but because I didn't want anyone to
think

of me as blind. Dimly I had begun to understand that if I were ever to step
beyond the confines of my current narrow life, it would be because I had
come

to terms with myself as I wasþa blind woman with energy and dreams and the
capacity to fulfill them.

 

No profound insight can remake a person overnight, but it is accurate to say
that from then on I was a different person. I organized a local chapter of

the Federation in my county. As I did so, I discovered that I could help
other blind people who hadn't yet learned even the little I knew about
coming

to accept themselves and being proud of who they were. I also discovered
just how many blind people had suffered real discrimination at society's
hands.

 

I learned that I have been incredibly lucky. No one had tried to take my
children away from me because I was a blind parent. This still happens to
blind

parents today despite the overwhelming evidence that blindness does not
prevent a person from being a good parent.

 

Each time I have looked for a job, I have found one. I learned that blind
people face a 70% unemployment rate not because only 30% of us are capable
to

holding down good jobs, but because employers don't believe that we can.

 

As I became active in the National Federation of the Blind, I met blind
people who simply did not recognize the boundaries I had always lived with.
They

traveled all over the country and the world independently, getting to their
planes, retrieving their luggage, and coping with ground transportation
without

thinking twice about the task.

 

I discovered that I could do these things as well, and I cannot express the
sensation of freedom I had packing for a plane trip and feeling no anxiety

about the logistics of getting where I needed to go.

 

I discovered blind people who read Braille at 400 words a minute. Though I
had been cheated as a child by not being forced to master the Braille code
thoroughly,

I could begin as an adult to change the situation.

 

The Federation also gave me personal fulfillment and a circle of wonderful
friends who knew and loved me for who I was. I had work to do.

 

I learned new skills. As a result of these new skills and the
self-confidence I have learned from the National Federation of the Blind, I
applied for a

job as a college administrator at Oberlin and got it. There I had a chance
to educate many people about the abilities of the blind. I also had plenty
of

opportunities to learn to juggle husband, children, home, full-time job, and
volunteer work.

 

I have moved on now to magazine editing. My children are almost grown, and
my new job requires that I travel frequently. I can hardly remember the days

when airports made my stomach turn inside out. Blindness is one of the
characteristics that define me. It means that I can't drive a car or read
print.

It also means that I am organized and have a well-trained mind two
characteristics that most of my friends would give a great deal to possess.

 

I still have room to grow. None of us has ever become all that we can. I
frequently discover little pockets of cowardice and insecurity in myself,
but

by and large, I am free thanks to the National Federation of the Blind.

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