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Authors: Anne Rivers Siddons
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foothills that the site commanded, of how it would come right into the house to be a part of it as the stones and mortar and oak beams were. He talked of how space and air were a design element, how the walls themselves would seem to open endlessly to sun and rain and the turn of the seasons.
“I see it as a house without boundaries,” he said. “As 54 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS
a place where you won’t know where you leave off and the woods and sky start. This is a nice starter house, kids, but these little rooms are like living in shoe boxes. Like a little rabbit warren. Tacky. The house I’m going to build for you will be like living in the woods, with the trees for a roof and all the world for a garden.”
Lacey began to scream. Within seconds she was hysterical and so near breathlessness we finally had to call the pediat-rician. It was only after an injection of sedative and much holding and rocking that we got words out of her.
Lacey was afraid she would fall out of her new house into thin air. And Philip’s words about the only house she knew had devastated her.
“That’s not how they are!” she said of the rooms he had described as shoe boxes, rabbit warrens. “It’s not! This house is beautiful! I hate the new house! I won’t live there! I won’t leave here!”
It was the first time I realized that the world Lacey had built for herself behind her eyes was far grander, more beautiful, than anything on the earth could be. That when we said “house,” Lacey saw something wonderful, splendid, unimaginable to us. How not? What had she for comparis-on?
And it was the first time I saw clearly what we were doing to her, Joe and I, by keeping her on the Mountain, away from the rest of the world.
I went to see Corinne Parker the next morning. By that fall, Lacey was enrolled in the long-term children’s rehabilitation program at the Cleveland Sight Center. When she went away in September to learn to live in the world, Joe went with her, of course, not me. Corinne had said that was best, and so had the people at the center.
HILL TOWNS / 55
“She’s already afraid,” Corinne said. “It’s inevitable, with her intuition, that she’ll catch your fear of leaving, and not understand it, and think she’s going into danger out there.
Let Joe take her alone. She understands he has a job and can’t stay with her, and it’ll be easier for her to let him go.
Don’t cry, Cat. This is best and it’s high time. Her real life starts now.”
But I did cry. Not only for my child, my child of the silver eyes who in her blindness saw palaces and unicorns and wonders and now must learn to see only reality, but for Joe, who lived in an agony of love for her and must now leave her to the ministrations of strangers—and for me. I would miss her as I would miss my hands or the beat of my own heart, and I would fear for her each moment that passed.
I hated knowing that no small part of my tears fell in simple gratitude that it had not, after all, been asked of me to leave the Mountain. But I did know it.
It was the right thing, of course. Lacey learned prodi-giously. She ate learning as if it were food and she starving; she embraced the world, with all its stenches and grime and dangers and meannesses and all its simple glories, as she would a lover. She had the tools: the clicker that helped her by its resonances to gauge depths and positions; the white cane; the myriad tricks, such as cooking by sound and positioning food in clock positions around her plate; the computer on which she could access the entire world of words and print out whatever she chose in Braille. And the wonderful dogs, with whom she could walk almost as easily in the world as the sighted. The first, named Luke after Luke Sky-walker, lies now in the garden of the new house that she did, after all, come to love, under her favorite red maple. The next, a loving black Lab named Joe after her father, is with her
56 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS
at
“I see it as a house without boundaries,” he said. “As 54 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS
a place where you won’t know where you leave off and the woods and sky start. This is a nice starter house, kids, but these little rooms are like living in shoe boxes. Like a little rabbit warren. Tacky. The house I’m going to build for you will be like living in the woods, with the trees for a roof and all the world for a garden.”
Lacey began to scream. Within seconds she was hysterical and so near breathlessness we finally had to call the pediat-rician. It was only after an injection of sedative and much holding and rocking that we got words out of her.
Lacey was afraid she would fall out of her new house into thin air. And Philip’s words about the only house she knew had devastated her.
“That’s not how they are!” she said of the rooms he had described as shoe boxes, rabbit warrens. “It’s not! This house is beautiful! I hate the new house! I won’t live there! I won’t leave here!”
It was the first time I realized that the world Lacey had built for herself behind her eyes was far grander, more beautiful, than anything on the earth could be. That when we said “house,” Lacey saw something wonderful, splendid, unimaginable to us. How not? What had she for comparis-on?
And it was the first time I saw clearly what we were doing to her, Joe and I, by keeping her on the Mountain, away from the rest of the world.
I went to see Corinne Parker the next morning. By that fall, Lacey was enrolled in the long-term children’s rehabilitation program at the Cleveland Sight Center. When she went away in September to learn to live in the world, Joe went with her, of course, not me. Corinne had said that was best, and so had the people at the center.
HILL TOWNS / 55
“She’s already afraid,” Corinne said. “It’s inevitable, with her intuition, that she’ll catch your fear of leaving, and not understand it, and think she’s going into danger out there.
Let Joe take her alone. She understands he has a job and can’t stay with her, and it’ll be easier for her to let him go.
Don’t cry, Cat. This is best and it’s high time. Her real life starts now.”
But I did cry. Not only for my child, my child of the silver eyes who in her blindness saw palaces and unicorns and wonders and now must learn to see only reality, but for Joe, who lived in an agony of love for her and must now leave her to the ministrations of strangers—and for me. I would miss her as I would miss my hands or the beat of my own heart, and I would fear for her each moment that passed.
I hated knowing that no small part of my tears fell in simple gratitude that it had not, after all, been asked of me to leave the Mountain. But I did know it.
It was the right thing, of course. Lacey learned prodi-giously. She ate learning as if it were food and she starving; she embraced the world, with all its stenches and grime and dangers and meannesses and all its simple glories, as she would a lover. She had the tools: the clicker that helped her by its resonances to gauge depths and positions; the white cane; the myriad tricks, such as cooking by sound and positioning food in clock positions around her plate; the computer on which she could access the entire world of words and print out whatever she chose in Braille. And the wonderful dogs, with whom she could walk almost as easily in the world as the sighted. The first, named Luke after Luke Sky-walker, lies now in the garden of the new house that she did, after all, come to love, under her favorite red maple. The next, a loving black Lab named Joe after her father, is with her
56 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS
at
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