BB Blind Barbara
I made Blind Barbara in 1997, the year Elliot was born, the year Eileen got married, the year Marlin had heart surgery and retired, and the year I had seven weeks of radiation treatments for my eye. I had an optic nerve sheath meningioma, a benign tumor which would have made me blind in both eyes if left untreated. As it was, I had lost vision out of the middle of my right eye, rather like retinal myopathy. BB was the only one who knew how scared I was. She always went with me to the U. of M. clinic in Ann Arbor, where I had radiation treatments. She helped me focus my attention on getting the radiation precisely on the tumor and no place else – memorizing exactly how the mask felt on my face. Rubbing her Ultrasuede boots helped me lie very, very still.
When she wasn’t on duty calming and comforting me in the medical center, BB stayed in the guest room in my daughter Lin’s basement. I slept there three nights a week while I had treatments at U of M Medical Center because it was a two hour drive from where I lived. I embellished BB’s dress or gave her something else that enhanced her appearance after I went through something difficult. I embroidered red cross stitch across the yoke of her blue linen dress. Another time I sewed tiny red pom-poms where the red crossed stitches intersected. Her legs were naked, so I made her leggings which were attached to silk panties.
I’ve had a life-long fear of going blind. I had a habit of walking around the house at night with no lights on to test the safety cues I had with minimal vision. Aunt Ella, my dad’s sister, gradually lost her sight toward the end of her life. As part of my Council of Selves, represents all the concerns and adaptations I’ve made relative to my eyesight.
Naturally, when I learned I had a tumor on my optic nerve, I went to a counseling therapist to find out whether anything in my psyche was promoting blindness. Under hypnosis, I engaged a past-life fantasy about Blind Barbara. I call it a fantasy rather than a past-life regression because I don’t want to deal with whether reincarnation is real or not. The story is significant to me, whether it’s fact or fantasy. One of my grandfathers immigrated from Alsace-Lorraine. My legal name, Barbara, was his wife’s name. It means stranger or barbarian.
Blind Barbara lived in the Alsace region of France toward the middle of the Sixteenth Century, after the Protestant Reformation and well into the Burning Times. She had several brothers who always got preferential treatment when they were growing up. One day she and one of her brothers went to the well for water and they both fell down just like Jack and Jill in the nursery rhyme. The brother was fine, but Barbara hit her head and lost her sight.
She was, however, able to spin wool and flax with her mother. Years after her mother died, she lived alone in the house and continued to spin. Her brothers brought wool and flax to their spinster sister and took the spun yarn to sell. They brought some scant food in exchange for her spinning. They needed the extra income from the yarn to survive. Barbara actually saved the family. As she aged, she declined. She was unable to keep herself and her house clean and became ill. The odor was overpowering. After they found her dead, her brothers simply burned down the house with her in it. She was probably a witch, anyway, they told themselves.
Around the year 2002 I thought the tumor on my optic nerve was growing again. I couldn’t see in larger and larger parts of my right-hand field of vision. I thought my eyesight was permanently deteriorating, and I knew the only treatment option involved severing my optic nerve. I went back to the University of Michigan, and learned that I had cataracts in both eyes, the thicker cataract on the right eye where I had the radiation. Surgery wasn’t recommended, though. Their protocol was to remove cataracts in both eyes near the same time. And they didn’t want to remove the cataract on my seeing eye for fear of a mishap to my only good eye. If I were the suing kind, it might have been a whale of a lawsuit if my stronger eye were damaged in the surgery.
Eventually I persuaded a different ophthalmologist to remove the thicker cataract caused by the radiation in my right eye. It helped a lot. And finally I had cataract laser surgery on my “good” eye as well. Twenty years later I had a “secondary cataract,” scar tissue that formed over the lens that was implanted during the earlier surgery. For those months of the quarantine in 2020 I had only a small field of clear vision on the lower left side.
I try not to complain about it, but this is probably about as good as my vision is going to get. As long as I’m telling the truth as accurately as I can, I’m neither bragging nor complaining, right? The first picture was taken looking out the window in the side door of my house. The second picture is what I see through my left eye. It’s worth noting what I can see with my left eye. I see only what I look at, but doesn’t everybody? Everything is blurry except for a little area to the lower left, where I can see well enough to thread a needle and crochet.
My computer monitor and my tv screen come through, but tire me after a while. With this area of clarity I can use my sewing machine. I can see the composition of a picture or scene, the lines and where the light and dark colors are. I also see anything else that catches my eye, which enables me to see some spills and spots around the house but not others. I didn’t have this area of clarity with the secondary cataract, and I appreciate it a lot.
The third picture is what I see with only my right eye. This is why I have no depth perception and am really, really careful going down stairs! This is why I carefully cultivate patience and my capacity for tediousness.
Losing most of the vision in my right eye had a mixed bag of side effects. My right eye used to be my stronger eye. Since it was hotwired to my left brain, I used to speed read like a house afire. Now I read very slowly and miss occasional words. Instead of reading books, I listen to recorded books, on tape, on cd’s and Audiobooks online.
On the positive side, I used to be accused of being “too left-brain oriented.” Since I can only see with my left eye, which is hotwired to my right brain, I see art and composition differently. I appreciate different color combinations. My struggle to understand color better had gone on for years. All that doesn’t make up for reading, but I’ll take whatever compensations I can get!
The photo shown is BB as I refurbished her for my 80th birthday party. She has glasses and a shiny blue pants suit. The silver pendant around her neck is a sad young woman, as a younger woman would be about the loss of vision.
In all this, I’ve learned a couple of important things. The best way I’ve found for keeping track of things that I’m always hunting for is to tether them! My TV remote is attached to the cart beside my chair with a loose rope of crochet stitches. My sewing scissors is attached to a large pincushion with sand in the center for sharpening pins and needles. The best thing I’ve learned is to enjoy the vision that remains as fully as I’m able. I do something every day that gives pleasure to that eye. That may be crocheting something or looking at scenery or visual images I like. I just want to see what there is to see.
