Nandina, cut off your blankety-blank computer, go by Teeters, get some bubbly, come over; let’s correct my mess. My friend’s story begins long before this savory request.
The round-face girl from Moore County wore striped overalls with brass snaps down the front as she romped around her farmhouse and spacious grounds. She’d lie on the ground and see how many insects she could count. She knew where the prickly sandspur plants were thickest. She knew the catbirds nested in the roses, where powdery ant hills, like tiny mountains, rose up from sandy soil. She knew the sour weed she could chew, where the bumps and gullies, the trees and the shrubs, the woods, and wildlife were on the land. Her country house had many rooms, a big front porch with swings, and inside were hidey holes, dark closets, and doors to hide behind when playing hide and seek.
This farm girl grew up and left Moore County for the streets of Manhattan where her life took her on one amazing adventure after another. She took up golf and bragged how she once beat Jack Nicklaus. She was a fly fisherman and a gourmet cook. She had a remarkable career as a professional communicator, a magazine columnist, a freelance writer, radio host, network stringer, and television producer. She married a publisher. They traveled the world together including an exciting flotilla down the Miramichi River, jaunting around the heath and heather in Scotland. She wore a smile as wide as her round face; her eyes twinkled in jest and joy. She loved life and life loved her back. Then tragedy struck and she was forced to see life from a very different viewpoint.
At first, she passed it off as a virus or fatigue, but the blurred vision got worse. She made the trek to her doctor, who immediately sent her to an eye specialist. The diagnosis was a benign tumor on the optic nerve of her left eye. Simple surgery would take care of the situation. During surgery, the doctor’s scalpel slipped and this country-turned-city girl awakened without any sight in her left eye and a meager fuzzy 10 percent in the other eye. Life became for her like looking through a peep-hole in a dark closet.
Friends told her she was handling her blindness “so well.” She knew differently. Depression! Despair! Muddy! Black! Cold! This is how my friend described her agonizing months ahead. Everything became different. Not only was she off balance, she also had a stubborn streak. Somehow she believed she’d awaken one morning and would see again. Too many tumbles later she caught a glimmer of understanding things were going to be different from now on whether she liked it or not. She made an appointment to see a mobility specialist. At first she took the white cane with the reluctance of someone who has been commanded to grasp a hot poker. To her the white cane symbolized everything she resisted, denied. And the way she lived her life afterward is more remarkable than all her other noted accomplishments.
This is where I, Nandina, come into the picture. I met her when she returned to Moore County to live. I will never forget our first encounter. She was tall and imposing. I am short and soft. Her language was savory, mine is Southern predictable. She was humorous. I am not. The one common storyline that linked us is our love for writing. As our friendship deepened, we became like family, sisters. It wasn’t long until I grew to expect a phone call from her around 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
Nandina turns off that blankety-blank computer, go by Teeter’s, pick up some bubbly, come over; let’s correct my mess.
I’d watch transfixed as she held a thick yellow pad up close to her right eye, take a big fat pen, and write flawlessly and with determination. My friend didn’t need me to help her with her writing. All I needed to do was read aloud every word and all punctuation in order for her to correct her mess. Of course, we sipped the bubbly. When finished I would take her corrected mess to my office, put it on my computer, print it, then mail her manuscript to Country Living Magazine or some other publication.
Event after event, story after story I began to understand how really seeing without sight illumines the mind and propels one to probe the mundane, the important, and put them in balance. Seeing without sight is an art: it’s a lesson written in wisdom, lived with tenacity. My friend had the wisdom that I still keep with me today.
Nandina, the sun shines somewhere every day. Tomorrow, I will see the sun, and my vision will be clear. Remember, friendships never die. They live on in memory and the written word. By the way, Nandina, I love my nickname for you. Keep it. It suits you.
I’ve learned much about life from my friend, and this one thing I will celebrate the rest of my life. Seeing without sight is not so hard if you live it with grace like my friend Jo Northrop.