WAG 5 writing assignment

“WAG #5: Life In Motion”
Sometimes it’s good to approach writing like taking a photograph with words. On
the other hand, it’s important to remember that a scene is always in transition.
For this week’s adventure, sit in a good observation spot and notice how the scene
in front of you changes from one minute to the next. Has the light changed? The sounds?
The people? What’s different now compared to when you first arrived? Is there anything
you can see (or hear, smell, etc) that is changing right in front of you? Be creative


So that’s the writing assignment for this week. Truer words were never spoken. Nothing is more consistent than change. Life is constantly in motion and if we don’t roll with it, we’ll be left behind. And I speak from experience. As many of you know, nine years ago I lost my vision after a long bout with progressive blindness. You wanna talk change?
I was a legal secretary, used to reading small print, typing orders for judges, preparing affidavits to establish child support payments. I spent my weekends horseback riding and painting, my passion. For two solid decades, my vision came and went. “Now you see it--now you don’t.” Life became a deadly game of hide and seek, fighting for my vision as well as my sanity. And after one final operation. Poof! Lights out…
Devastated, I enrolled in a sixteen week program for the blind and visually impaired where I was taught mobility, personal adjustment and the use of a computer with adaptive software—converting text into synthesized speech.
How could my life have come to this, I wondered, my first day at the rehab program. I sat glued to a chair, hands clenched so tight on the wooden arms my fingers went numb. I was afraid to move for fear of killing myself. There were steep cement steps all over the building. I visualized tumbling down those steps in slow motion, arms floundering, hysterical screams spewing from my mouth until I landed at the bottom with a heavy thud. Then I’d die a slow and tortuous death from a broken neck. Icy fingers of fear skittered down my spine. Crazy flashes raced helter skelter through my brain like a freight train out of control. Just as I was about to scream to escape these nightmarish scenes, I heard a loud tap followed by a hard smack on the wall, heavy footsteps and the unmistakable sound of a white cane sweeping the floor. And the footsteps vibrating off the wall were heading my way.
The next thing I knew my feet were stomped on, the cane thrashed across my legs and the footsteps came to a halt. “Did I step on someone?” his voice was loud, but what I perceived to be young.
“Ah…yeah,” I said, curling my still-smarting toes far under my chair.
“Sorry,” He said, picking up right where he left off, same ritual. Tap, hard smack on the wall, dragging of heavy footsteps, the swoosh of the cane sweeping across the floor. My stomach lurched. Is this what my life had come to? Would they do that to me? Make me use one of those dreaded white canes? I felt the walls closing in on me. No way could I accept such a life of isolation and segregation. No way.
But as the sixteen weeks passed, I learned to roll with the punches. Part of the reason I was reluctant to enroll in a program for the blind was because I thought clients would be uneducated. I was a professional after all. What could I possibly have in common with these people. I was wrong. They were ordinary people…with extraordinary people…just like me, thrust into circumstances beyond their control. I met doctors and teachers, paramedics and engineers. We bonded in a way words could never express. It was a challenging journey filled with heart-wrenching pain. We laughed and we cried. Through this program, I found the courage to move on. I learned what I was made of. What didn’t kill me made me stronger.

Sharon Donovan