Teresa:

I have other friends who are blind, and they too say, "It's so nice to see you." It just seems natural. They were either blind from birth, or at least for most of their life. I don't know what is harder (never having experienced either.) My Mother's Father went blind in his 80's, and became a very bitter man. I guess blindness is like other physical handicaps. How you deal with it depends on your attitude toward life. My Grandfather who went blind was always pretty bitter and hard-hearted. His blindness just made him moreso.

One of the people I most greatly admire is Kathy Leigh Johnson.. a wonderful woman I met at the Adirondack Folk/Gospel Festival many years ago. Kathy had everything imaginable going against her. Blindness was only part of the problem. And yet, she persevered and was living a very positive life when I met her. A few years after that, she met a wonderful young man who was a minister (and also a musician) and they wre married. He is blind, too.

For those of us like me, who have been blessed with wonderful health, there is no way of truly understanding what it is like to have a seriously limiting handicap. But, it seems like everything else... you find people who live fully productive, rich lives who are handicapped, just as you meet people in perfect health who bitch constantly.

Only goes to show.

Kathy had a machine that could "read" letters for her, which made it easy to communicate. She also had a computer that could do the same.
How great!

Jerry