Many may have read this true story in the past but who didn't, can read now.
Do you know any couple in India like this one discussed in the piece?
Do inform, please.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-05-11/news/ct-met-blind-adopting-blind-20110511_1_cta-bus-rupa-lessons
Love is blind inside the two-story brick house on Mulligan Avenue. And
that is why the microwave buttons are marked with Braille. The clocks
in the home all announce the time. And at 7:15 a.m., everyone is
listening carefully for the school bus.
Ten-year-old Rupa is the first to hear it. "Oh, the bus is here!" she
calls. Her mother rushes to the front window, listening for
confirmation before calling out: "That's it!"
Rupa grabs her white cane. Six-year-old Aihua reaches down and, guided
by touch alone, pulls on a pair of rubber rain boots. Then Paula
Sprecher hustles them outside. With each step of this hectic
school-day morning, the 49-year-old mother of two helps her daughters
find their way in a world that neither she nor they can see.
Sprecher and her husband, Alan, have been legally blind since birth.
And though Alan had some doubts about fatherhood — would they have
enough to offer a child? — the couple took a leap of faith in 2008 and
adopted Rupa from India. In January, they brought home Aihua from
China.
Both girls are blind, too — Rupa can detect some light, while Aihua
has no vision at all. And that is fine with the Sprechers, who
describe each of their daughters as "a gift."
"My husband and I, we grew up without sight," Paula explains. "This is
so normal to us. We knew there were children out there who were
probably given up (because they were blind), and we wanted to provide
a home for someone like us, for someone we thought we could help."
Helping the girls, the Sprechers know, means pushing them into the
world. And so they teach their daughters how to ride the CTA bus
(listen carefully for each stop, they say), how to identify coins by
their size and weight ("This is a dime!" says Aihua, correctly), how
to sort the laundry (pin your socks together before you put them in
the wash).
The Sprechers have come to realize that, in the long arc of life,
success rests on a foundation of a thousand little lessons. And so,
day by day, inside the cozy house with the blue shutters, lessons
about dimes and socks become lessons about confidence and
independence. Though she is still learning English, Aihua declares
with perfect pronunciation: "I can do it!" It's a phrase that makes
her parents smile.
"They're going to be functioning in the world someday," says Paula.
"We try to teach the kids a routine and let go a little more and
more."
Canes, cues
Letting go isn't always so easy.
At Farnsworth Elementary School, both girls are mainstreamed in
regular classes and receive help from a classroom aide and instruction
in Braille. Sprecher is a teacher who works with the blind at the
school, and so she is never far away.
But on a recent morning, when she popped her head into the music room
to check on Aihua, she couldn't see that that her daughter — who has
only been in school for three months and, because of the language
barrier, can't understand much of what's happening around her — was in
the back of the classroom, looking a little scared and hiding her face
between her knees
--
Avinash Shahi
M.Phil Research Scholar
Centre for The Study of Law and Governance
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi India
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