On Crickets

Every Wednesday night at the O'Neill Omaha house, a ritual takes place. I like to refer to it as "Jen's Sanity Hour." (Even though it is really an hour and a half. From 6:30pm to 8:00pm to be exact. CST to be even more exact.) It is a beautiful thing, and everyone in the household recognizes this at some level, be it a 2-year-old level, a 3-year-old level, or a 30-s0mething-year-old level. Remember the phrase "If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy?" No further explanation required.


The ritual that takes place has been happening for over six months now. Every Wednesday, I hop up onto my bed, settle in with the phone, plug in my little earpiece, call a magical 1-877 number, and join 8-10 other mom's across the nation along with a faciliator for the Jewish Guild for the Blind's Retinpathy of Prematurity parent teleconference. Our kids range in age from 2-11, our geographical location ranges from California to Pennsylvania, but our commonality is the simple yet ever so complicated fact that we all gave birth to micropreemies and survived the world of the NICU-- only to have Retinopathy of Prematurity and some level of blindness as the exclamation point to the whole experience. So....once weekly, we get on the phone and laugh, trade child-rearing recipes, ventilate, celebrate, and together, share stories of how our children teach us everyday how very smart we really are not.

One of these stories came several weeks ago from one of our moms, Marisa, whose son, Sol, is eleven years old---and happens to be completely blind. It has been close to my heart ever since. She shared the story as we were having a discussion on the pathology we all share: wondering exactly how much vision our children do have...and secretly hope it is a lot more like ours than different...even though we all really believe our daily mantra that vison does not determine a person's ability to lead an extremely full and independent life.

Anyway, the story. Marisa and Sol were out late one evening. As Sol stepped outside, he said, "Boy it is really dark outside." Marisa admits that her heart skipped a beat of delight---could it be? He was able to see enough to tell the difference between light and darkness! However, as every "good" mother of a visually impaired child does, she refrained from showing too much excitement, not wanting to make him feel like his worthiness was dependent on his vision. Casually, she said, "Tell me what you mean, Sol." "Well mom, you KNOW that more crickets come out and their chirping gets louder and louder as the night gets darker."

My ponderings on this: Slap in the face. Hello. Wake up. We sighted folks think that vision is the key to understanding and existing in our world. We think that we need to see things in order to make sense of what is happening. How many times have you been asked, "if you had to lose your hearing or your sight.....?" Guilty. I used to choose 'take my hearing I'll keep my sight thank you very much.' The reality is, we fear. We are so dependent on our vision that we are extremely fearul of how we would function if we lost it. We are so dependent on our vision that we fail to see that people can and do function completely independently because they get information that we cannot as our vision limits our ability to think outside the box.

Thankfully, we have the Sol's and the Camille's of the world to remind us that life is not about what we can and cannot see. It is about how we find our way. Thankfully, we have the Sol's and Camille's of the world to prod us to think outside the box. Thankfully, we have crickets.