A Sense of Touch

It’s grass that always reminds me. That and skin. My cousin was a couple years older than I was in the summer of my 11th year. He had been blind since birth. He had acclimated himself quite well to the sighted world. He got around with one of those white canes with the red tip. I remember thinking how cool that was, that he could get around almost anywhere with that thing and I could trip on a sheet of paper. He lived in Pittsburgh when we were living in Tennessee. He came to visit that summer with his mother, just months after his father had left them for another woman, never to be seen or heard from again. My parents had been separated since I was about nine or so, and I understood his pain. I related to this boy in ways I never thought possible. He seemed to know me, having never met me. He taught me things about myself. Taught me to appreciate the simple things.

The apartment complex we lived in at that time was a large facility surrounding a nine acre lake. There was fishing and a small beach with sand at the north end of the complex. We took walks to that beach almost everyday, just to get away from our parents who always seemed to be talking about adult stuff and didn’t want us around much. It was on one of these trips to the beach that he taught me such a valuable lesson.

We had settled down near the boat docks, just sitting in the sun, listening to the water wash up on the boards and the mallards chasing each other around the lake. He asked me what they looked like. I told him of the deep browns and the green streak in their feathers. I tried very hard to tell him about their eyes, that always seemed to be following us. I just couldn’t find the right words. I couldn’t explain exactly what I was seeing. He told me it was okay. He understood that I just couldn’t see. I looked at him with a quizzical look. What did he mean? I am the one with sight, how could I not see?

He got up from the dock and walked over to the sand. I got up and hurried after him, the sand always being difficult for him to maneuver around in, always causing his footing to be unsure. I reached for his arm to guide him, but he jerked me away. He told me to follow him to the edge of the water. We sat down just where the washing of the water stopped in the sand, our feet being washed by the edge of the water, our backsides sitting on dry sand. He told me to close my eyes. He asked me to reach back and grab a handful of sand and allow it to slowly drain from my hand through my fingers. When I was done, he told me to do it again, but this time to tell him exactly what I felt. I followed his instructions, honestly intrigued by the process he had me taking.

The first time with the sand in my hand, I tried very hard to think of the things I would say the second time through. He must have sensed what I was doing, because he told me to stop thinking so much and just feel. “Do it again and don’t say a word. Don’t think, just fell.” So, I did it again. I emptied my mind as best as I could and allowed myself to feel. He then told me to do it again and tell him what I feel. As the sand started to slide through my fingers, I told him that it felt like warm ants trying desperately to get out of the hold I had them in. He said that was good. Now, to grab a handful of sand from in front of me, the wet sand at my feet. I closed my eyes again. I reached for the sand and tried to let it filter through my fingers. Small amounts dropped, but most of the clotted sand stayed in my hand. I told him that it felt like holding the sense of cool in my hand. It was like holding something that desperately wanted to be something, but needed some assistance to be. Good, he said. Now, take your hand and run it through the water and tell me what you feel. I closed my eyes and leaned forward to lower my hand into the water. I flexed my fingers back and forth and tried desperately to think of something other than wet. He asked me what I felt. I told him that it just felt like water, but unclean water. There was a sense of life to it. I could feel the heaviness of the invisible particles of algae and other senses of what has fish jumping and ducks sticking their heads in the water.

He seemed pleased. He explained to me that he was happy with his life, but he did miss actually seeing things. He had to rely on others to tell him the description of things he could only hear or feel. He explained that a lot of times, their descriptions fell short of what his mind could imagine. He said that touch was an amazing way of opening our minds to things that our eyes miss. He told me that we take for granted that what we see is really all there is to what is in the world. But, that touch is really where the true description lies. He also told me that if I allowed my mind to stay open when I touched things, that I could see things in my mind that my eyes could never put into focus. And that with that kind of attention, we would create memories that would live within us forever. He sensed that he had lost me a bit. At this age, it was hard to follow something so deep. He tapped my shoulder and told me to take him to the grass of the park just beyond the beach. We sat down in the sun and he told me to close my eyes and to run my hands over the grass, slowly and tell him what I felt. I told him that I had felt grass before, but he told me that I had never felt it like this. He told me to open my palms and spread my fingers. He told me to lightly glide my hands over the grass and allow my mind to only think about what I was feeling. I did what I was told.

My first sense was the warmth. The sun had warmed the tips of the grass in it’s afternoon glare. I never thought of heat or cold when it came to grass, it just was. My next sense was feeling the way the blades were turned towards the light and warmth of the sun. The blades felt stiff and seemed to fight my hands to get back into the light. I could sense the moisture just beneath the grass, lying low to the ground. The moisture from the rain of the morning trapped under the blades for feeding. I realized that I had never felt anything quite like this. Warmth at the top, cool and moist underneath. I opened my eyes to see him smiling at me.

“Now you can see. Tell me again about the mallards.”

I told him they were like winged children, flying from place to place, with no real purpose other than to play or eat. They seemed to be putting on a show for us, swimming in the lake, chasing each other and just having fun. I told him that I was jealous of them, there was no divorce in that lake. There was no anger, no adult talk. I told him that I could only dream of flying and I could almost feel the air that must flow through their feathers. And the way the water washed off their back made it seem that nothing bad could ever touch them.

He was smiling.

I sat there feeling quite proud of myself. He told me that I was only just starting to learn, but if I allowed myself to keep trying, I would find all kinds of interesting feelings right at the tip of my fingers. He said that the coolest thing that he could do is determine looks by touching someone’s face. But, that it wasn’t just physical things he could sense, but he could feel what the person was feeling. He turned towards me and asked if he could touch my face. I have to say, that at this pre-teen age, I found this kind of weird, but I agreed, afraid of hurting his feelings.

He turned towards me further and reached his hands up to my face. He told me to close my eyes so he didn’t poke me and he started at my forehead. He slowly ran his fingers down my face, pausing for seconds every few inches. I could see his eyes behind the glasses twitching back and forth like someone trying to see the whole world at one time. As he got to my chin, he ran his fingers around the sides of my face and down below my ears to my neck.

He dropped his hands and just sat there for a moment. He told me that I was fair skinned, freckled. I asked him how he could know that. He said that he could feel the pattern of the freckles in my skin. He said that I had deep brows, eyes that sat back in my head making them appear very deep. Almost sad. He told me that my jaw told him that I was strong, probably stronger than I realized. He said that the angle of my neck told him that I had a hard time looking up, to see the world in front of me all the time.

I didn’t know what to say. He told me that he could sense my sadness without touching me, but he had to feel it to confirm it. He said that he sensed I was carrying a great secret that I was afraid to tell, but that I wouldn’t find relief until I allowed others to help me.

That scared me more than he could know. More than anyone would know for a very long time.

He told me that he needed me to understand one thing. That he would never forget me. That he would always know me, if he saw me a hundred years later, he could feel my face and know it was me. He said that touch with a open mind was like tattooing an image to a mind. He kept all those images locked away in his imagination and pulled them out when he needed them. He told me that if I tried really hard, I could do this, too.

I have never forgotten that moment on the beach. I have spent a lifetime trying to acquire his gift. I think in some instances, I have found it. I can identify things by touch, without ever seeing them. I spent a lifetime creating sound with my hands, allowing the sense of touch to guide me on how to control sound. I have tried very hard to capture moments that seem important to me with touch.

It has created a touchy feely sense in me. I love hugs…from almost anyone. That feeling of warmth reminds me of so many things, but mostly that I am alive and that I am loved. Holding hands as always been important to me and I find myself very jealous of those couple that practice that act in public. It’s the most simple, but most intimate touch that we possess. I remember the cool touch of my stepson’s face as I tried to comfort him while he was so very sick…just to get him to relax and sleep. I remember the feeling of wrapping my fingers around the leather of a baseball as I relayed it into the infield after pulling it from my glove in one fluid motion (with maybe just a hitch). I remember the disturbingly horrible feeling of carrying the casket of my great-grandmother, born less than a decade after Lincoln was shot, who sat with me in my youth and taught me so very much about where we had come from and what we needed to be thankful for, no matter how little we had. I remember the touch of the hand of the first girl in junior high school who told me she loved me like no other and wanted to be my girlfriend forever. I remember the feeling of my niece’s tears on my chest as I held her as she cried from the skinned knee she received falling off her bike as I was teaching her to ride on hot summer day. I remember the cold feeling of the rails on the hospital bed that I laid in while they wheeled me into a surgical room to remove the tumor from my body.

I had been told for years that my desire to touch, to store my memories, was irritating, annoying. I was told that it was almost creepy. I have discovered that isn’t quite true. Because of that, my fingers have recently created many tattoos in my mind. They have felt a hand in their’s. They have felt the quiver underneath skin. And they have recorded them all. I can close my eyes and recall them with ease. And by doing so, and recalling the feeling of someone’s fingers touching me, I start to remember that I am alive, that I am loved. And with that, I realize that I have been blessed with a gift from the blind that most of us never receive.

I must remember to someday thank that cousin. It’s been many years since I have seen him, not quite a hundred. But, one thing I know for sure, with the touch of my face, he and I will be sitting in the sun, on a beach , in the grass in a summer so long ago. And he will know me.