dance steps through the dim

"Are you ready for today?"  I asked in passing, before her stretching into the daylight yet to break 4 hours of regular practice followed by a 4-hour session with the choreographer. 

Donna and Beach 2 years ago

Beach had been looking forward to this day for the past 6 months. She dreamed about what her new floor routine would be.  Excited and nervous to work with arguably the best choreographer in the States. 
  

So you understand how I wasn't ready for her answer. Standing in the dim of the doorway. "No" long pause "... I can't see."

My heart dropped into my stomach, like the moment in the little dark room when her right eye is covered, and the giant E is projected on the wall.  "Can you read this?" Dr. Conklin asks.  "No." She answers.

It gets me every time.  How can you not see that?!

She explained what was going on. "I put in my new contacts, but I can't see...."
She switched them- 3 times.  Tried a new pair, but there was no improvement. 

She fell into dark silence as I tried to cheerfully offer solutions.  A few minutes passed this way, then she crept off, crawled into my bed, and began crying. 

Really it is a small glitch.  SMALL like spilled milk.  Logic smiling, there is obviously something wrong with the new box of contacts.  But the old emotions of darkness & fog coupled with the fear of all the future questions regarding the long-term prognoses of her sight pulled her down. 

All the way back to the little 4-year-old girl.  Nose pressed to the tv screen balling.  "I still can't see it." 

I contacted her coach.  He called her to come in as she was.  They would modify her workout as needed. 

She pulled herself together on the outside.  We sent her to work out in her glasses which she quickly shed.  Safe beyond the reach of my parental realm. 

I didn't stay to watch.  I finally got ahold of her doctor, who I had been calling since 7am.  It was confirmed, a small clerical error sent her with the wrong lens for her good eye. Even with correction, her left eye remains legally blind, so she couldn't tell that the left contact was okay. It will be a week before the correct ones arrive; until then, I was given a lens close to the one she should have.  Not ideal but doable.  

I posted on FB that I was proud of her, but it's hard to explain.  When her vision is removed, she slips into a place few people ever see her go.  I know the strong, capable Beach everyone else sees, but I also know the Beach no one else does.  The part of her that is afraid of making clumsy blunders, afraid of admitting when she can't see something- even lying to cover an error of miss-sight.  The kid that leans heavily into guessing and perception to read the world.  Crossing her fingers, she is following along.

Donna and Beach 2 years ago

Ryan Knighton, the author of Cockeyed, began going blind at the age of 18. His stories are on This American Life all the time.  He says the hardest part of losing his sight was the embarrassment of it.  Beach agrees.  

The reason I call her Beach the Brave isn't from the way she fearlessly chases the light of life.  It's because of the way she boldly walks in the dark. 

Near the end of her choreography session, she knelt on the gym floor beside me.  Grabbing a few bites to eat, washing it down with thick chocolate milk.  She laughed, "I SO can't see."

When she competes for this routine for the first time in early December, the judges will never know she learned it "blind."  That she learned it mostly from feeling it- listening to the directions under Donna's lead but not always able to see her demonstrations.  Limited too by the small slow healing avulsion fracture in her hip. 

This is what Alterabled really means.  Crawling out of bed and facing head-on the hand you were dealt.  Finding a way to turn unfair into an unfair advantage.  Beach dances with the sight of muscle.  It is so unbelievably beautiful.  

Blindfolded by disability, audaciously bright by determination.