THE PROMISE OF SPRING.

I was startled by the sound of the bell even though I was expecting it to ring. I opened the door to Gordon, the man I’d recently talked to on the phone. This was his first visit. He was a mobility instructor. He had come to widen my world for I am blind and he was going to teach me the way round my area so I could go out alone. We shook hands. Like his voice his hands were warm and on letting go of mine he swiftly returned me to my blind “island” state. I offered him coffee which he accepted and I made it with nervous fingers – Two spoonfuls in each cup and four on the tray on which they stood. His help was unobtrusively given and gratefully accepted. Gordon was a good listener but then that’s essential in his work. Living on my own as I do I tend to talk a lot. His manner was easy and when we went out so he could assess how good I was at using my cane and what local knowledge I had, for the first time in many years with one of these mobility instructors, I felt easy too


“I think you did really well today. We don’t normally go out on our first visits to a client as you know but you were right to assure me you would be fine.”, he said when we returned home. “I’ll come again next week and we’ll progress from there”. Suddenly he was gone and I was left alone to contemplate the day’s events. Although I was looking forward to his visits I was not looking forward to going out alone as I knew I’d have to one day. I knew how the drill was. These people get further and further away from you as confidence and knowledge increase until finally they disappear altogether and only meet up again when you have reached your destination. I had a shock next time he called. There was to be no long chat over coffee like there was last time. We were out working at once but the work was not too difficult. We strolled around a park so I could relearn my cane technique while not having to also cope with traffic. I’d been ill for some years and had lost my guide dog. This meant I had to a large extent become agoraphobic. He told me something about himself – His taste in food, his hobbies and his bachellor existence. Privately I wondered why a nice guy like this wasn’t married but would never have voiced these thoughts. In turn I told him how nice it was to speak to someone who treated me normally and not like some moron or freak, how nice it was to be with someone who wasn’t constantly on the watch to see that they didn’t use words like “look” and “see” and how good it is to talk to someone who isn’t making an effort to talk to me. I started to think about him during his absence but that I most certainly did not tell him. The work progressed well. I was just as interested in practising my cane technique to please Gordon as I was for the obvious benefits it would have for myself. I go red even when I’m alone when I think though how sometimes I deliberately got a section of the route wrong so I would have to take his arm as he took me back to its start so I could redo it properly. It’s funny what a solitary life coupled with very little human contact will make people do – Well it would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Then I received this phone call. My twin brother, Daniel was dead. My neighbours spouted the usual platitudes so I gave up talking to them about him especially after his funeral when life was supposed to return to normal. “At least you have your memories”. Couldn’t they see it was my memories which were hurting me? Anyway I wanted what I’ve always wanted and what most people have – Support for the future and not just memories of a shared past. When Gordon came I burst into tears. He held me and told me he didn’t expect me to go out that day and that like the first day we met we could once more have coffee. This man had indeed widened my world. He had helped me to like using my up-to-then hated white cane which I saw as the ultimate badge of blindness and which I associated with power-crazed people who had always told me my mobility was poor. He didn’t automatically assume that I had poor mobility as many do because of the eye condition from which I suffer which supposedly pre-disposes one to poor mobility. For all these reasons I found myself leaning on him more and more and eventually suggested that he might like to drop in for coffee outside our scheduled lesson times. I was asking him in essence to become my friend and confidante. I don’t know who of us was the more embarrassed. I could feel the tension in the air as he swiftly changed the subject to why it was that I didn’t go on holiday to places where blind people go or why I don’t belong to blind clubs. I wearily told him as I have so many others that I have tried all my life to escape from the small and narrow world of those similarly affected and to cut the ties that bind me to the rest of the blind with whom after all there is only blindness which binds us all together. Only with other friends of the same intelligence and shared interests do I have anything in common, regardless of whether they can see. I told him how artificial and unnatural it is to keep meeting up with old school friends and enemies alike when you can’t get away from the goldfish bowl. I said how once the labels are applied they’re impossible to remove whether they are the ones applied by the sighted or other blind people and then in sheer desperation I said: “Do you go away with those of your choice? Your work colleagues or people named Gordon”? I wondered why even this enlightened man could not see that the same standards should pertain to me as to everyone else. I tightly held on to his fingers as he tried to extricate himself from my grip as he was leaving.

The phone call came soon after that. By now I had almost completed my work programme so his visits were becoming less frequent. A woman called Jean told me that she was to take over from Gordon as he had an increased work load. “But he still comes to Portsmouth. I know he does. He sees Stella, my friend”, I protested. Then I went on about how he sees Laurie as well – Obviously not understanding or not wanting to – The implications of what was being said to me. I rang him up at a later date to ask why the transfer had happened. I was angry and he said in his turn: “This is very difficult for me Heather. I really do sympathise with your plight and actually can’t understand why you haven’t got more friends and why things have gone so terribly wrong for you but there’s nothing more I can do I’m sorry”. He was telling me that our relationship – Professional though it was – Had now come to an end and that even if it were to continue it could not extend beyond its professional capacity where it must always remain. I felt sorry too – Not least of all for him as well as myself who now, because of my feelings for him and because of my loneliness due to the loss of Daniel, longed for the relationship to be something more than it could be. He had to be naturally warm and friendly to his clients in order to instill confidence and trust and I had misread those signals and because of that he had to pass the case over to someone else and obviously felt lousy about doing it.

I started writing to him at work and telling him about things. I knew Jean would update him anyway and that there was no need to write as I did but I couldn’t help myself. I knew too that he wouldn’t, couldn’t reply. I continually thought about him and would ask Jean about him who always gave me vague and non-committal answers. She’s nice too. I found myself wondering how many of their clients they’d exchanged when they tried to come close, to cling to them in inappropriate ways. Then I started my usual musings about how it is often easier for blind men who get mothered by “mumsy” types who are after all just looking, like me for someone to care for them and to be cared for in return. I wondered if Gordon and Jean laughed about us behind our backs or thought of their clients as sad lame ducks and whether they were flattered or embarrassed by our misguided feelings.

I’ve made up my mind to stop writing letters to Gordon. I’ve even stopped asking Jean about him too. I think she has interpreted this as a good sign but it’s not. My heart’s still breaking over the loss of Daniel but that’s not all it’s breaking over. It’s breaking over the loss of things I’ve both had and never had – Acceptance as a normal human being, by those who are after all just as flawed albeit in a different way, The chance to make a relationship with someone sighted due to reduced opportunities because of hidden disabilities and the fact that sighted men will never see me as a whole woman – Only a blind woman but more than that it’s breaking with the ever-increasing weight of love which is ungiven and which bitterness is threatening to sour. For me life has been a series of earthquakes and my spirit is becoming crushed beneath the rubble.

I’ve just come back from shopping. Gordon was instructing someone else when we met in the town centre. “You’re getting on really well, Heather”, he said. I thanked him for his comments and walked swiftly away. It’s a year since Daniel’s death and of course Gordon meant that I was getting on well in mobility terms. He couldn’t have meant in any other terms since I’m not getting on very well at all apart from being able to go out alone in safety now. I suppose I can’t or won’t until and unless I can meet anyone to whom I am other than a client and unless I can be cared for in anything except for professional terms. How can I progress till life progresses beyond the conveyor belt caring which is all that professional concern can ever amount to and until I can put my arm through that of another for another reason other than just to see me from one side of the road to another.

As I hurried away I heard Gordon shout after me: “Although it’s only February there’s the promise of spring. Some of the buds are coming out on the trees”. To me and for me God’s promise of the spring has been broken many times and the certainty of the summer is definitely for someone else.

(the end).