What Sky Sees

I guess I think about Sky’s blindness a lot. Particularly after visits with his therapy team or after a trip to Portland to see the doctor—it’s hard not to. I ride the rollercoaster of “he’s doing great! Look at him cruise a long!” then drop into a milestone-spiral thinking of how “behind” he is. Last week I went to a professional training in Portland, so Sky came with me and hung out with my mother-in-law while I was at class. I was there as Professional Mandi , and I just got to be a PT in a room with other healing women and got to talk about my toddler with others who had kids. At the end of the first day, I realized that I hadn’t thought of him as blind or in reference to any disability at all for the full day. I showed a classmate the photo his Mamo sent me at lunch without any worry about needing to explain his glasses or tell her that he’s blind. He was just my kid. I was just his proud mom. I don’t know what is normal in this world of parenting. We’re making it up as we go (as ...

  Blind When we first got Sky’s diagnosis, the term “visual impairment” was the primary thing we heard.  Sky is visually impaired.  He has visual impairment. We met a TVI–a teacher of students with visual impairment. So that’s what I told people–he’s visually impaired or has “vision issues”. It felt softer. I don’t know how it lands with most folks, but I think many assume that means he needs glasses. Which he does. Like many of us–we need glasses to help us read or help us focus our eyes. When I post photos on social media of him in his glasses I'll inevitably get someone messaging me to ask how we know he needs glasses. Most of us realize we need glasses because we can’t read the letters on the wall in front of us, right? Or we get headaches. Or things look fuzzy. It’s so subjective. But we can’t ask him what he sees.  Or rather, he can’t tell us. Yet. We know he needs glasses because a surgeon took out his lenses. We know he has structural impairments in his eyes ...