Some Simple Steps to Rasing a Happy Blind Child 4. Get Funky with Your OCD

It’s Monday morning and my Little Dude and I have been partying hard this weekend.  We’ve had people visiting, baked 6 dozen cookies and neglected the housework with wild abandon.  This morning, after I sent him off to school, I couldn’t settle down and start writing this until I put the house in order.  

So, I unleashed my inner Obsessive Compulsive and let her rage on the disorder and chaos that was masquerading as my Living Room.  She scrubbed, swept, mopped, and delighted in making sure that the toy basket is exactly 2 inches to the left of the keyboard table and the water bottles are on the proper shelf in the Fridge.

This Mental Disorder is a new facet of my personality.  From birth to the age of 31, I enjoyed a relatively messy existence – not dirty, mind you – just incredibly disorganized. There were times my Mother wept bitterly disappointed tears over the disastrous state of my childhood bedroom, I could never find anything in my High School locker and my first car looked like a Wal-Mart on wheels.  I guess I don’t have the Martha Stewart gene.  My first apartment was beautiful and well organized, because I love to entertain, but my bedroom hid a majestic mountain of clean but rejected clothing and neglected laundry.  Avalanches were a real possibility.  There were times I was quite frightened, yet unwilling to go to the Laundry matt.  

Our first place in Aruba was a miniscule apartment.  Evo and I lived like Spartans, he had his fishing equipment and I had my laptop, favorite jeans and several pair of shoes.  We may have owned a pack of crackers…maybe.  Enter the baby.  Suddenly our two, tiny rooms trembled under the weight of a million infant accessories.  

When Gabriel started scooting around our miniscule apartment my imagination shifted into hyper drive.  I imagined him blindly rummaging through Daddy’s tackle box, getting snagged on a hook and the resulting tears, trauma and involvement of Child Protective Services.  I imagined him, 6 – brushing his teeth by himself, picking up the Preparation H instead of his Spiderman Colgate and having to explain to the Triage nurse why my sweet child suddenly has a little, puckered fish face.   I imagined all the horrors that awaited my child in a world he can’t see. Out of nowhere, my psyche released a spirit born of order and homeostasis…a Type A personality, if you will.  My Mother would be so proud.

 

Gabriel is incredibly adaptable and quick to learn.  Put him in a new place, show him around twice and he’s pretty much got it.  When he’s somewhere familiar and predictable, he runs and plays like any sighted child.  He drops the Zombie shuffle and walks with confidence, maybe even a hint of a swagger.  This only works, however if nothing ever changes much and everything is always put back in it's place. Naturally, that's impossible, but I try.

Seeing my little dude comfortable is one of my favorite things, so keeping everything in place is a small price to pay.   In the world he walks slowly, gets turned around, confused.  His blindness is debilitating, an enormous burden for such small shoulders to bear.  At home, he knows where everything is, can help himself as much as any other 5 year old. He knows he's safe. At home he isn’t blind – it’s just that he can’t see.