Sight

Most of the time I don't mind. Really. I forget that I'm missing out at all, since I've never known anything else. In fact, when I was very young, I was totally blind--I was born that way, since my optic nerve, among other things, didn't form properly--but that, for reasons still unknown, ceased to be true when I was about two. I don't remember it myself, but my parents have told me the story of my dad coming home from work, turning on a light in our house, and me looking up at it. My mom once called it a miracle.

So I think I'm doing pretty well, all things considered. I see well enough that people sometimes don't notice until or unless I tell them (though one of the problems with my eyes is a noticable one--a weakness of my eye muscles makes my eyes jump back and forth all the time...though I've been told this has gotten better in recent years; I can't tell myself, the things I'm looking at don't appear to be jumping around, so I guess my brain has figured out how to compensate).

( But. )

I remember being in our backyard with my dad one night when I was quite young. He showed me constellations. See that bright star there? That's the end of the handle of the Little Dipper. I asked him what a dipper was, and I remember that he said it was a little basket for water, because I imagined a basket in the sky, made of points of light.

But I didn't have glasses yet and without them I can see only the brightest stars; the sky is mostly black to me, and thogh I can see a few light dots, it's often not even enough to catch my attention. And I love stars. But stars always bring out longing in people, we want to reach out to them. I want that too, but I'd be happy just to really see them.