Some Good Reading

My incoming Google Reader offers this article today
a blind man’s knowledge expands while using Braille.

When we moved here in the Spring of 1983, our next door neighbors were an older retired couple who were delighted to have a busy family with youngsters moving in just across the yard.

We got vegetables from their garden left on the back steps, hands waving to come over and sit awhile on the porch under the overhead fan and have some lemonade and popcorn, a pickle jar with holes in the lid ready for housing lightning bugs being caught by our then 3 year old son.
Oh how they loved to watch children play in their yard and ‘helping’ in the garden.

A most precious gift of friendship.

As time went by, I learned they actually had three children who were all growed up and moved away with jobs and families and busy lifestyles elsewhere.

Their youngest daughter was blind.  There had been an accident with the amount of oxygen in her newborn incubator, and her eyes were bothered the most.  She had grown up going to a school for the handicapped, learning independence along with it.  She had married, with a job.

When our neighbor was clearing out stuff, she found a box with pages of arithmetic problems written in Braille, leftovers from her daughter’s school days.
I was doing childcare at the house then, and so she brought the box over to me, saying she thought the children might enjoy playing with something so different from their usual picture books.

We did have fun, trying to figure out what it all meant.
The kids learned there are so many ways to communicate.
One of the boys was learning at school about the Underground Railroad and quilt patterns and songs used by the slaves to escape.  So many connections.

I’m not sure what happened to the box of Braille sheets, but reading the article above sure brought up some fond memories.

~~love and Huggs, Diane