The City And The Fear

The City And The Fear

The Braille Monitor_______December

1997

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Marc and Patricia Maurer with their son

David Patrick and daughter Dianna Marie.

The

City and the Fear

by Marc Maurer

From the Editor: The following Christmas

story first appeared in Like Cats and Dogs, the eleventh in the NFB's

Kernel Book series of paperbacks. We reprint it here along with our wish for

a joyful holiday season for all Monitor readers. We begin with Dr. Jernigan's

introduction:

A knowledge of the meaning of blindness

is not automatic; it must be learned--or, in many cases, unlearned. When childhood

fears are added to the mix, the combination can lead to frustration and anxiety.

Marc Maurer, President of the National

Federation of the Blind, has two young children. Regular Kernel Book readers

have followed the birth of his son David, their adventures in Cub Scouting,

camping, cutting fire wood, and repairing the roof. Through all of it Marc has

simply been David's father--who happens to be blind. But now David is approaching

his teens. As he begins to absorb society's traditional attitudes about blindness,

how will his father protect the relationship and keep it from deteriorating?

In his heartwarming account of a family holiday trip, President Maurer explores

this issue. Here is what he has to say:

In the Maurer household there are two

adults and two children. My wife Patricia and I are both blind, but our children,

David and Dianna, are not. David is thirteen and Dianna is ten. We are a family

in the traditional sense--we go places together; perform family projects together;

cook, clean, repair our home, and maintain our yard together; attend church

together; and explore new horizons together.

We almost never discuss blindness. We

don't forget it, but it is rarely a topic of conversation. Of course in the

planning for our activities we remember that blindness is a factor. We do not

own an automobile because none of us can drive it. So travel plans include hiring

taxis, buying airplane or railroad tickets, renting automobiles and hiring drivers,

calling upon friends and colleagues who have cars, taking buses, walking, using

the subway, or some combination of these methods.

Then there is mowing the lawn and maintaining

the yard. We do this as a family. My part of the job includes maintaining the

lawn mower and other gardening equipment. We have a hedge, which runs along

the front edge of our property. I keep this clipped, using a gasoline-powered

hedge trimmer. If you touch the trimmer in the wrong place, it will trim your

fingers along with the hedge--so I don't.

I also spend part of my time mowing the

grass. However, this job is usually performed by David. My wife and daughter

undertake to pick up the sticks and stray papers in the yard. The combination

of effort gets the job done.

David and I mow the grass differently.

He is sighted, and he watches what the lawn mower is doing. I am blind, so I

use other techniques. I often mow under low-hanging trees and shrubs. David

finds this frustrating because he finds it difficult to see what he is doing.

I can follow the shrub line or use the branches to tell me where I am and how

much of the space has already been mowed. He uses one technique, and I use another.

Working together, we keep the yard neat and tidy.

Inside the family there is no misunderstanding

about who is in charge or how responsibilities are determined. The parents make

decisions, and the children must follow direction. If the children misbehave,

they are reprimanded or punished as circumstances warrant. They are given assignments

and expected to carry them out, and they must seek permission to go visiting

or engage in other activities away from home. This arrangement is stable, and

predictable.

Outside of our family this understanding

is not always shared. From time to time we have encountered remonstrances from

strangers. They tell my children that they must take care of their parents.

They will stop my son or daughter on the street and tell them to be careful

that I don't run into a telephone pole.

If I do run into a telephone pole, a

thing which almost never happens, the children are sometimes chastised by strangers

for their supposed neglect. My sighted children have been repeatedly told that

they are responsible for their blind parents.

Sometime during the fall Dianna asked

me if we could go to New York. I was surprised. I have been to New York many

times, and of course at one level of my mind I knew that she hadn't but I simply

wasn't thinking in those terms. "Would you like to go to New York?"

I asked.

"Yes," she replied. "I'd

certainly like to go. Can we?"

So we planned to take a trip to New York

City.

Since I love my daughter, and since I

like to please her, we began planning the trip immediately. The questions were

numerous. When would we go? What would we do? What would the trip cost?

Could we afford it? I considered waiting

until another year. Expenses during the past few months had been heavy, and

I wondered whether the budget could take any more travel. However, I am particularly

fond of my family, and I want very much to give them the experiences they want

if we can afford them. Besides, I am aware that postponed promises are often

never kept.

There is always something more important

that interferes, or the yearning that caused the request to be made in the first

place dries up before the promise is carried out. With all these thoughts in

mind, I decided that we should travel to New York right after Christmas. The

Christmas decorations would still be in place, and maybe the crowds would be

a little smaller after the holiday had passed.

Dianna was delighted, but David was not.

He did not want to go. He asked if we could invite someone else to go with us.

As the time for the trip came nearer, he became less and less enthusiastic.

He wondered aloud if there wouldn't be

some work assignment that would prevent me from going so the trip would need

to be canceled. He told his mother and me that there wasn't anything in New

York that he wanted to see. He said that he would just stay in the hotel and

watch television. He worried about how we would get to the train station and

what we would do to find our way around New York City. Finally he became unresponsive

and irritable when we discussed the upcoming trip. I wondered why, and when

he asked once again if we could take somebody with us, the answer became clear.

David, my sighted son, was worried that

he would be expected to serve as the responsible leader of our family--that

he would be called upon to know what to do and where to go--that he would be

required to make decisions and plan the trip. He felt that he was inadequate

to meet the challenge and that he would be expected to shoulder responsibilities

that were beyond him. He was worried that he might fail his parents and that

his failure would cause distress or danger. Even if there were no danger, he

thought the trip might be a failure because he would not know where we should

go, therefore making the excursion to New York a disappointment, a disappointment

that would be his fault.

As soon as I understood the problem,

I knew what we must do. We would travel to New York and have a wonderful time.

We would go together as a family, and we would do it alone--two blind parents--protecting,

shepherding, guiding, and caring for our two sighted children. I decided not

to tell David that I thought he might learn from this experience and ultimately

profit from it. Instead I reminded him about all of the wonderful places there

are to visit in New York. But it didn't seem to cheer him up at all.

On a Thursday morning, the day after

Christmas, we boarded a train in Baltimore and headed for New York. I had hoped

that the crowds would have diminished because we were traveling after Christmas.

However, this was not the case.

The train was jam-packed. We had hoped

to find four seats together, but no such luck. We settled for two. Mom, Dad,

and David sat in the two seats; and Dianna sat on the suitcases at our feet.

There was nowhere else to go and nowhere else to stow the luggage. You could

say it was cozy, but you might also have called it cramped. Fortunately the

train ride from Baltimore to New York takes only a little over two hours, and

the excitement of planning the next few days kept us occupied.

We had tickets for the Thursday evening

performance of the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. We talked

about visiting Rockefeller Center to see the tree and watch the ice skating.

David wanted a chance to visit the toy store, F.A.O. Schwarz; and Dianna expressed

a wish to shop at the Warner Brothers store because she especially likes Tweety

Bird.

As the train halted in Pennsylvania Station

in New York City, we stepped out into the cold air and followed other passengers

up the escalator. As we left the station, I welcomed the children to the sidewalks

of New York--sidewalks as crowded as I ever remember them in the Big Apple.

We found a taxi and loaded our bags into it. In a short time we reached the

hotel, where we would stay for the next three days.

Our room was what you would expect in

a decent New York hotel, but David (still mistrustful) wanted to know why it

was so small and why it didn't have fancier amenities. He had seen the Plaza

in a movie, and he thought we ought to go there. I told him to quit griping

and put his bag away so that we wouldn't stumble over it during our stay.

I also told him to get ready for lunch,

but he told me he wasn't hungry. I got the idea that he was more nervous than

ever. But I was not prepared for his nervousness and irritability to become

the controlling factors in the trip. I gave him his instructions: hungry or

not, he was going to have lunch; so he had better get ready. I wondered whether

the trip had been a mistake, but we were in the Big Apple, and I intended to

do all that I could to make our stay there enjoyable and memorable.

So the first order of business was lunch.

In the hotel coffee shop Dianna and her brother both ordered chicken noodle

soup, and they were warmed as much by the familiar food as by the steaming broth.

After lunch it was time to explore the

city. We were planning to attend the early evening performance of the Christmas

Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall, so on our way to the show we decided to

stop by Rockefeller Center (across the street from Radio City) to see the enormous

Christmas tree and watch the ice skaters.

I asked the doorman at our hotel to give

me directions to Rockefeller Center. We were on 47th Street, not far from Broadway.

The doorman told me I should walk up Sixth Avenue to 49th and I would see it.

He said we could get there in about ten minutes, so we started out.

The afternoon was chilly, and there were

people everywhere. Street vendors offered us hot roasted nuts, hot dogs, soft

pretzels, and hard goods such as sunglasses and electronic watches. But we were

not yet acclimated to New York, so we kept on our way without stopping to bargain

or buy. I was in the lead, walking with David, and Patricia followed with Dianna.

When we came to the corner of 49th and

Sixth, we did not find Radio City, but somebody told us, if we kept on for a

block, we'd be there. And a block later there it was. On 50th Street we came

to the skating rink. The crowds were enormous, and the line for admission to

the rink was exceedingly long. We watched the skaters and admired the dazzling

Christmas tree, decorated with hundreds of colored lights and a big white star

at the top.

As the afternoon became evening, we joined

the line for the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. The story of

Christmas is timeless, but there are many ways to present it. Santa Claus told

us that he couldn't do his work in one night all by himself, so he recruited

helpers. In a few moments there were sixty Santas on the stage. A moment later

Dianna laughed in astonishment when animated Christmas trees danced in time

to the music. Then there was the story of the Christ child. My small daughter

confided to me that she thought the camel (a real one), which was part of this

segment of the performance, looked unhappy and confused.

David enjoyed the show too, but he still

seemed nervous. When we started back for the hotel, he thought we were going

the wrong way. He imagined that we were getting more and more lost in this big

strange city, but I told him we were all right, and, sure enough, we were soon

in familiar territory. When he saw the nut vendor outside our hotel, he obviously

began to feel relaxed. He said to me that we had found the place, and without

telling him that we had never lost it, I agreed.

The next day we started out for the toy

stores, Warner Brothers and F.A.O. Schwarz. They are within a block of each

other on Fifth Avenue, and across the street is the Plaza. This hotel, featured

in the movie Home Alone, fascinated the children; and I promised to take them

there for lunch. We did not merely eat; we dined. The children asked for spaghetti,

which did not appear on the menu, but the waiter said they would find some.

The surroundings were elegant; the service was impeccable; and the bill, when

it came, was as impressive as everything else.

Then it was off to the Empire State Building.

More than fourteen hundred feet in height, this tallest of New York buildings

has an observation deck on the 102nd floor, from which we could see a cruise

ship in the distance. A short walk from the Empire State Building is Macy's

Department Store, a central feature in the Christmas movie Miracle on 34th Street.

On the way there we passed more street vendors. Dianna bought a beret, and David

purchased a Nike watch.

On Saturday morning we set off for the

Statue of Liberty. This symbol of American freedom is over a hundred years old.

We hired a taxi for the ride to the harbor, but we were puzzled about the place

the ferry docked. I asked David if he saw the spot to board, but he did not.

I told him I would ask some of the passersby where it was. He argued with me,

telling me that they were ordinary tourists, not public officials. I said that

they didn't need to be public officials to give us information and that they

might know the answers to our questions. When I asked, they told us what we

wanted to know. David was astonished and relieved to discover that this simple

technique worked so well.

The method for finding your way is much

alike for both the blind and the sighted. In an unfamiliar place it may be necessary

to ask for directions. If the directions are correct and complete, this solves

the problem. If not, a request for more information may be made. This is how

all of us learn how to get where we want to go.

On our ferry boat ride to the Statue

of Liberty, we were at peace and enjoying the sightseeing as a family. David

had stopped worrying that everything would go wrong. He had been reminded, not

in words but by example, that blindness does not prevent his parents from managing

the family and protecting him and his sister. He came to recognize that he was

not responsible for his parents but that the responsibility ran the other way.

He felt good about this, and he relaxed.

In our walk around the base of the Statue

of Liberty, a piece of history and the hope of the future came together. I could

not help reflecting that the lessons learned by my children on the trip to New

York are a small part of the process that will bring understanding and opportunity

to all of humankind, including not only the blind but also the sighted.

Through the years blindness has often

been misunderstood, and that misunderstanding has prevented those of us who

are blind from achieving our full potential. However, working together, we can

change the negatives that have so frequently been associated with blindness.

Sometimes it is done on the job, sometimes in a television appearance, and sometimes

by what is written in a newspaper or a magazine. Sometimes it is done by a walk

around the base of the Statue of Liberty on a holiday trip to New York.