Abuse

Addictions

"GOING BLIND"

An Original Story By BaddTeddy

Edited By BaddFroggy and Eleni8202

Graphics courtesy of BaddPebbles

Copyright 2001 Steven W. Nunnally

This is insane. I can't believe we're doing this. No, don't look up, they might see my eyes. They might see me looking at them. They might attack us.

That crazy old lady! I can't believe she is doing this to herself. I can't believe she is doing this to me. I should have had her committed. But no, I had to play the role of a good son and simply try to talk her out of it. How naive I was in thinking that Mother would change her mind when she saw these people. I really am dumb, Mother is going blind, and I am just plain stupid. I need to just grab her hand and turn her around, take her back and arrange for her to be put in a nice rest home, a place where she will be safe.

Are those footsteps behind us? Please don't let them be footsteps. They are footsteps. I guess it's better if we just keep walking forward. No telling what might happen if I grab Mother's hand and turn around. I just can't believe she's not afraid. Look at her grinning, the old fool. A smile from ear to ear. Anyone looking at her can tell she's completely nuts. Why didn't I do the right thing? How did I let her talk me into bringing her here? Am I insane? No, probably just really stupid.

The footsteps are getting closer. Mother is not afraid, she's just nuts. Me, I'm so afraid I can barely walk. I'm afraid to look up, afraid to see where we are heading. I'm afraid of what might happen. If we were attacked would anyone even help us? We are strangers here. It's their world, not ours. No, most likely no one would help. Who would help crazy folks like us? We are a crazy woman and her son walking in a neighborhood where they don't belong, so out of place that we look like flying pigs in a fish tank. Let's face it, everyone is probably staring at us. Now I know what they mean when they say "be afraid. be very afraid".

How did this insanity really begin? I never took Mom and Dad seriously. I never believed they meant to do it. I thought it was just talk, old people talk, dreaming and reminiscing, even fantasizing, but still just talk. I never thought they would go through with it. Even as we started walking today, I never believed that Mom would go through with it. But here we are, in the roughest neighborhood I have ever seen in my life, walking next to my mother who's grinning like the village idiot. But I guess I'm the idiot. After all, I'm here now.

When did the talk start? I guess it was a year before Dad died, maybe even years before that. I sure do miss him. I really did love him even if, in his own way, he was as crazy as Mom was. I guess I love Mom, too. I just wish she wasn't going blind and insane at the same time, and I really wish people would stop staring at us.

The first time I remember hearing about it was just after finding out that my father was dying. I think I took the news of Father's illness harder than he did. Mom and I were really hurting, but Dad, he just smiled and said, "My time has come, I'm tired and I need rest, and all I regret is that I have not done more to build a better world for my children." What kind of nutty talk was that? Sounded like Shakespeare. My brothers and sisters just smiled, said a few kind words, and returned to their homes on the other coast. I was the only one who made the mistake of living too close to Mom and Dad. Talking them out of their insane plan became my responsibility. Go figure.

Kids are beginning to point at us, while smiling and giggling. They are wondering why a man from the other side of town would come here, and why he would bring his senile grinning old mother. Please kids, leave us alone, don't attract people's attention to us. Oh, thank goodness! They ran off laughing and hollering, at least no one seems to have noticed us yet.

It started when we found out that Dad was dying, but maybe really before that, when they found out Mom was going blind. They tried to spare us from the bad news at first. They didn't tell us about Dad's "condition", or that Mom was slowly losing her sight. Instead, over time we slowly figured it out by ourselves. It was little things at first, like when Mom, who loved to drive, had started letting Dad drive. Dad, who loved to go fishing, had begun to stay home more and more often. These were just some of the little signs, and if we had been paying attention, we might have noticed sooner, but we didn't, and we had to live with that.

The plan, their wacky insane plan, started out just as talk. They would casually mention things that they had always wanted to do in their lifetime. Dad was a teacher and had always wanted to open a school. Mom was a librarian and had always wanted to open her own free library for kids. But it was just talk. Old folks talk. No one took it seriously. It was just old people dreaming of what they "could have done" if their lives had been different. So we all said, "Sure Dad, maybe someday." Or saying to Mom, "Someday you will have that library, I believe in you," knowing even as we said it, that we didn't believe any such thing. We were smart enough to recognize that these were just normal fantasies that parents sometimes had.

So what went wrong? When did they cross the line from fantasy to insanity? Where did they get the idea for this crazy project, and why here?

Oh No! Here was another crazy old lady, and she was one of them. She actually smiled back at my grinning mother and waved. This is a disaster. I've got to make Mom walk faster. Maybe we can find a phone and it won't be so bad when we get there.

I guess it was finding out that all their dreams were lost forever that finally pushed Mom and Dad over the edge. Mom's dream of having her own library went up in smoke when she began to lose her sight. She hasn't been able to read a book in several years and now she's almost completely blind. In a few months, she won't be able to see her hand in front of her own face, and of course, Dad's dream of building a school was crushed when he found out he was dying, so their dreams were crushed almost simultaneously. Their lives were about to be changed forever, and if they were like most normal people they would have given up. Instead, it seemed to inspire them to work harder to make their dreams come true. Of course, we didn't know about their plan back then, but even back then they had begun to plan this insanity. Yes, I think it was the bad news that drove them both insane. How could such otherwise normal and happy people be so mentally unbalanced that they would try to do the impossible in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by people who would surely think them strange?

Wow! This is really scary. I have never been in a neighborhood like this in my life. These people are so different from the people where I live. Not only do they look different, but they talk and act different too. They are strange, and scary, very scary. And now they are all staring at us. There are storekeepers, children, old people and hoodlums all staring at the man in a suit and tie, who, along with the smiling lady with the stupid grin, walk through one of the roughest neighborhoods around. Gang members on street corners turn to stare. One wrong move, one wrong word and we are dog meat. Oh please, don't let there be any dogs out today. How we have managed to get so far without being hurt I don't know, but sooner or later one of these people with the shifty eyes will speak to us and that will be the end of yours truly and mommy dearest.

During Father's final days, they finally told us about THE PLAN. They should have called it the crazy plan of mentally unbalanced old people. Let's face it, the wheels may still be turning but the gerbil is dead. When they sat us down to tell us of their grand scheme, we all listened attentively for about five seconds and then began laughing. We thought it was their idea of humor. Old people can be strange too, but they were dead serious. When we laughed you would have thought their faces would have crumpled, but instead they just smiled a knowing smile. How I have learned to hate that knowing smile, that grin that seemingly never left either of their sweet loving faces. Even on the day of my father's death, Mother smiled. It was as though he wasn't dead to her, and she even told me, your Father will never truly die as long as I keep his dream alive. OK, Mom, time for the nice men with the butterfly nets to take you away for a little shock therapy, because if you think you can do this, you are completely bonkers.

Oh, please don't let this be it. Don't let this be the house that Mother bought. The house is a shambles and it's surrounded by other works of ancient history. All of them looked like the perfect setting for one of those TV murder mysteries. Why do I feel like we are to be the victims?

Dad explained everything to us a few weeks before we lost him forever. I guess it was his way of making things easier for Mother. Both of them understood that we would have objections and they were right. Both of them knew we would resist, and they were correct again. I think both of them also knew we would think them insane. Bingo! Say the secret word and we'll send your parents to the loony bin. But there was one thing they knew we didn't, and which was that none of us had it in our hearts to refuse our father's last wish.

How will Mother ever live here? It's a shambles. It's dangerous. It was bad enough that the people were scary, but how can a blind woman live alone in a ramshackle old house like this? So, it was Father who told us their secret, a secret that none of us wanted to believe, one that we all thought was nuts. This secret was the reason for "yours truly" being where he was right this minute. I found myself in the middle of a rough neighborhood. Here I was standing in front of a building that should be scheduled for demolition, surrounded by gawking strangers, standing by a crazy old lady whose grin was so wide it looked like her face would split in half at any minute.

What was the secret? What could bring me here on a cloudy day (or any day!)? What secret could result in me leaving my crazy old mother alone out here in the middle of a bad neighborhood to fend for herself? The secret was that Mother and Father had sold everything they owned. They had sold their house, their furniture, cashed in their retirement funds. They had even taken out a loan based on the expected income from the insurance company when Father passed away. Their secret was that they had spent every dime they had in the world to buy a decrepit old house and fill it with books that were not even new, they were really old. These books had been collected from bookstores that were going out of business, from rummage sales, and from libraries. They had bought enough books to almost completely fill this decrepit old house to the walls. In other words, they were not only crazy, they also were now broke.

I wish people would quit staring. Now that we are here, surely Mother will decide to turn back. What? What is she doing? She's actually heading towards the house. Her smile is even bigger now, if that's possible. Even as old as she is, she looks like she is walking on air. There's this glow about her, a happy glow, one that you would expect at the end of a fairy tale when the hero saves the damsel in distress, which is not likely here today. I guess in her mind, it is her and father's dream finally coming true. In my mind, it's time to call Dr. Feel Good and ask for some nice little pills for Mother.

Some dream; they take every penny they have and buy a dump, fill it with books and call it a school/library, claiming they want to change the world, or at least how some people see the world. Is this in fulfillment of both of their dreams? Sounds more like the beginning of my nightmares. How will I take care of Mother now? What will I do? How will I explain to her that the little green men are not real, that there is no Santa Claus? How will I tell her that the Easter Bunny ate a boiled egg and got food poisoning or that the tooth fairy is just a dream created with the help of the nitrous oxide that dentists use? In other words, how will I explain to Mother that her reality is that she is broke, going blind and will have to be put in a nursing home to protect her from herself? Yeah, some dream.

I tell Mother it's time to go, but she insists on staying. As I try to persuade her to leave, she starts to make a scene. We can't have that, now can we? These strange people might decide to get involved in our business. "Come along quietly Mother. What do you mean you aren't coming? You can't stay here. It's dangerous. Please, Mother, I'm begging you for your own good. What do you mean, someday I will understand? Well, at least let me send out some workers to repair the house and give it a coat of paint. What do you mean you don't want your house to look better than the one next to it? What do you mean, it's time for me to leave now? How can I leave you here alone? Mother? Mother, why are you locking the door? Mother! Open this door this minute! Mother?"

I can't believe it's been a year since I ran helter-skelter from Mother's new home. The neighbors stared when I tried to get into the house through a window. People began to gather as I ranted and raved at her for being so insane, and her answer to me was a simple "I love you, son." Then there was silence. As my anger subsided, I realized a small crowd had gathered. Some of them were obviously gang members. Fearing for my safety, I began to walk back the way we had come. I lost my nerve as I heard laughter behind me, and so I ran. I ran for miles, back to where we had left the car, because Mother had insisted she wanted to walk in and see the neighborhood one more time before she went completely blind. I remember crying in the car from anxiety over Mother's safety, and also out of thankfulness that I was safe. I do remember I cried long and hard.

For a year now, I have tried not to think of that day. I have avoided thinking of Mother. Part of me wants to go get her. Part of me is afraid to. Sometimes I wonder if she is dead or alive. I have nightmares. How could a blind woman survive on her own in a neighborhood like that without money? Fear, shame or guilt, I know not which one, or perhaps it is all of them, but something kept me from going to see Mother for a year. For some reason, today I feel different. I woke up wanting to put my fears aside and go see my mother, so here I go again. At first I thought I would drive to her home, but that just didn't feel right. When Mother and I went the first time, we went on foot, and so for some reason I felt I had to go on foot this time too. Strange, maybe insanity is contagious. Lord only knows I have had some strange thoughts over the last year. Once, I even dreamed that my grinning blind old mother had set up a fancy library and was serving tea and crumpets in the middle of the desert.

I changed into some clothes that I felt would make me a little less conspicuous. I would stick out like a sore thumb even if I changed clothes. But it felt right, so I did it, and then I started walking. It was a much longer walk than I remember. It started out in a nice suburban neighborhood with big beautiful trees, new cars, fancy homes and people just like me. As I got closer to Mother, the new cars were replaced by "work-mobiles", or "hold-me-togethers", and finally the occasional "four-wheels-and-a-Band-Aid". New homes were replaced by stately old relics and by pre-Gothic architecture. There was also the occasional vacant lot.

Yet, it was the people that changed the most as I walked on. In my neighborhood people hardly noticed each other. They went out of their way to pretend they didn't see each other. Let's face it, there's a reason people refer to it as Snob City. As I walked into the next neighborhood, I noticed that there were more people outside. Some of them even waved and said hello, the kids there seemed to be more like kids. It probably wasn't true. I think what I was realizing was that kids in my neighborhood play inside with their video games and televisions, while kids in the less fortunate areas play outside with their friends. Did I say less fortunate? I wonder.

The biggest change took place as I crossed the railroad tracks. It was like going from one world to another, and fear began to creep back into my heart. The people here really do look, act and talk differently. I'm not sure if it makes them bad people or not, but it does make me afraid of them. All philosophical talk of understanding and overcoming xenophobia aside, I was afraid.

People stared at me. The truth is, some of them were probably as afraid of me as I was of them. They had no more idea of the reason I was in their neighborhood than I did. Others among them had nothing to be afraid of, the tough guys, the gang members. They watched me. I seemed to be the single most interesting thing on the street that day. It's almost as if the whole neighborhood had been waiting for this strange man to come walking down the street this morning. They stared, but they said nothing, and while I was afraid of them, they did nothing I could honestly call threatening. Maybe the fear was in my mind, but then again, if I wasn't careful I might wake up dead.

At about the same time, I saw the first of "them." I saw these children wearing an armband of blue, pink and gold. I thought that maybe this was part of some game, but then I saw several street-wise gang members loitering on a street corner and one of them was wearing a headband that had been dyed blue, pink and gold. As I walked further and further I saw more and more of these blue, pink and gold armbands, ribbons and headbands. It seemed to be some kind of identifier for people belonging to the same group or clique. It was kind of a badge of honor, judging from the way they seemed to take pride in it, and I wondered how I had missed noticing them the first time I was here. Of course, that was probably because I spent the whole time staring at my shoes and avoiding eye contact with strangers.

As I approached Mother's monstrosity, as I had come to think of it, that ramshackle old house that looked like it would be perfect for the Adams family or the Munsters, I was surprised to see people standing out front. I walked up slowly and quietly. I was expecting police vehicles to arrive any second, perhaps a robber or men in white suits with nets chasing Mother around the front yard. I just knew that something was going on. You could feel it in the air. There was a look of expectation in these people's faces.

I walked up slowly and saw that mothers, fathers and small children had gathered in front of my mother's monstrosity of a home, but that wasn't really fair to say anymore. It hadn't been painted or anything close to that. Mother would not have allowed that. The roof had been repaired, the whole building cleaned, little things fixed here and there, the bushes trimmed and the grass cut. It looked respectable in a quaint, old-fashioned kind of way. Even a new home cannot quite look the way hers did now, but who had fixed it? It certainly could not have been Mother. She was going blind. Mother could not afford to hire anyone to do it. She spent all her money on old books. So, who fixed the gutters, who trimmed the hedges, fixed the stairs, and mowed the lawn? Could it have been the people who now stood outside my mother's home, and if so, why?

Standing back in the shade of an old oak tree, I decided that I didn't fit in and that I would just stand back and watch. About this time my mother came walking out. I knew she was blind. The doctors told me that she would be, but for more than a few minutes I wasn't sure that was true. She came walking out and people would say good morning to her and she would respond to them by name. She walked slowly down to the front where I saw that someone had installed old-fashioned iron and wood bench seats in front of the house. After she had said hello to all the parents, Mother sat and then the children came forward. First a little girl came forward and said, "Good Morning, Mother." Mother? Why was this little girl calling her, Mother? Next, a little boy came up and gave her a hug and said, "Good Morning, Mother." It seemed that either I had a lot of brothers and sisters that Mother and Father neglected to tell me about, or something strange was going on here.

The little children continued to gather around Mother, I mean, my mother. Some sat on the stone steps, and others on the benches while even others sat on old tree stumps or on the grass. One little girl came up and sat on Mother's lap. That is when I got the shock of my life. One of the older ladies came forward and gave Mother a book. My poor old blind mother opened it up and began to read out loud, slowly, like a true storyteller. Her eyes roamed about looking at each of the children in turn. As she read the book, the children all looked on in rapt attention. None of them seemed to notice that the lady reading the book to them was blind, and was either making the stories up or reciting them from memory. If any of them did notice, they didn't seem to mind.

As she read to the children, mothers and fathers passed out cookies and lemonade. It was like a day in the park a hundred years ago, where the village librarian read to all the children. You could tell that my mother loved these children and was enjoying every minute of this selfless act. She seemed to know the name of each and every child. She knew what to say to make them smile and laugh. She knew just where their emotional giggle buttons were. Imagine, children listening to an old lady read a book instead of watching TV! It was amazing. But what was more amazing, was that, after the little children got their short funny stories, older children began to appear, and Mother read to them, too. The older ones got mostly historical adventures, with funny twists. They laughed and smiled too. I even found a little smile growing on my face now and then as her stories grew more and more hair-raising. Pardon the pun, but she did tell a great story about how Farmer Joe tried to raise giant rabbits over a hundred years ago, and the story really was "hare-raising".

Morning turned into noon, noon into afternoon, and afternoon into evening, and still Mother read. As the day progressed, younger children left and were replaced by older children and adults. Towards evening, it seemed that the roughest looking characters in the city had joined them. I saw construction workers, those I had considered hoodlums, and a few gang members hanging around in the back and trying to look cool.

It amazed me that everyone was being kind and polite. There was no posturing, except for gang members trying to look cool while they pretended not to listen to an old lady telling stories to children. I started to notice that many of those in attendance were wearing those blue, pink and gold ribbons, armbands and headbands. Many of the local gang members were now wearing them. It was like being surrounded by a rainbow. But, what did the blue, pink and gold bands and ribbons signify? It seemed that the later it got to be, the more of them I saw, and that each person who had one glanced at it now and then as if in awe. It wasn't so much that they were magical, it was more as if they represented something to the wearer, something that was important. I had no idea what that was.

Finally, Mother asked for another book, a very large book. This book was very old, and was handed to her by an elderly man, who could barely hold it up. But he did so carefully, as though handling a delicate treasure. The crowd looked on in awe. I could sense that this was what they had all been waiting for. They had all been waiting for Mother to read from this one special book.

I can't remember the exact stories Mother read from the book that night. All I can remember are some of the thoughts that went through my head as she read. I'm not even sure if what she read was supposed to be history or fiction. I remember that the stories were about struggles of good versus evil. It was about real heroes and real villains, not those comic book heroes we see on TV today. No, these were real people, with real feelings and real fears. The stories were about people facing that which they feared most. I remember things from the stories but not the stories themselves. It was as though I were in a trance. I remember her telling one story about how evil dragons had tried to take all the children, and how the king's men had run away, while the villagers had found the courage to fight the dragons themselves. I remember her telling all kinds of stories of how the little people faced giants in battle. Sometimes the little guy would win, and sometimes it was the giants, but the little people always fought with courage. I remember her telling about this one group of villagers who had made themselves into knights and had worn blue, pink and gold arm bands as they rode into battle to save the innocent from one bad guy after another. These knights did not always win, but they always fought with great courage. And then, just as the magic spell seemed to break, she closed the book.

Now that the story was over, the crowd parted and a small boy in a wheelchair came forward. He sat next to Mother and held her hand as she told a story that brought tears to my eyes. It was a true story of how this little boy in a wheelchair had protected a puppy from gang members from a nearby neighborhood. She told about him wrapping the puppy in his arms as the gang members taunted him and tossed him out of his chair. It told of how they had threatened to break all his bones if he did not give them the puppy. But in the end, the gang members left him pretty much intact, and the puppy was saved. At this point, Mother reached back into the book, and pulled out three ribbons, one blue, one pink and one gold ribbon. She wrapped these around the arms of the little boy's wheelchair as children and the parents looked on. I could see tears of joy in the little boy's eyes as Mother tied the ribbons to his wheelchair. Everyone applauded his courage.

I finally understood that the blue, pink and gold ribbons, armbands and headbands represented badges of courage. They could not be given, they had to be earned through acts of courage. I understood something else, that my mother was the most courageous woman I had ever met. I walked forward to where there was a crowd around me on all sides. They looked on silently and said not a word as I bent down in front of my mother, and said what I had needed to say for so long. "Mother, I love you. I am proud of you for your courage. I am proud of you for following your dreams. I am ashamed that I laughed at you. You said you wanted to change the world and I laughed at you. But now I realize what you meant. You wanted to change how people see the world, and Mother, you changed the way I see the world. I am even more ashamed that not only didn't I believe in you, but I ran away and left you here all alone. Mother, I love you and respect you, and I am ashamed that I was afraid."

At that moment, my mother did something I will never forget. She opened the book up again. She reached between the pages and pulled out a headband and started to put it on my head and I said, "No, Mother. These people earned theirs. I was afraid, I ran away and I don't deserve to wear something that stands for bravery." Mother took my face within her soft hands. Even though Mother was blind, I felt as if she was looking directly into my eyes when she said, "A year ago you were afraid and you ran away, but today you faced your greatest fears in life - today you earned the right to wear the 'Ribbons of Hope.'"

As I cried in my mother's arms for the first time since I was a child, the whole crowd, who seemed to have understood from the beginning who I was and why I was there, burst into applause.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY

Don't let the illusions of reality blind you, find strength in the face of adversity, and when you find the courage within yourself to follow your dreams, you will find happiness.

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