blind insight

Three Snapshots

One.

Last week. I join a friend to swim in the heated outdoor lap pool at her gym. We shiver on the endless walk from locker room to poolside, then feel the tingling warmth spread from toes to shoulders as we slip into the water. The shadows deepen and shift as the daylight fades and the underwater lights grow progressively brighter. A momentary chill nibbles at my elbow with each stroke.

Two.

Yesterday morning. 6:20 a.m. Two deer stand in the middle of the street, right in front of my house. I am in an endorphin fog on my way home from the gym and don't notice them until I'm just a few feet away. They stand alert, full of coiled energy. I stop in my tracks to admire them, unable to keep from smiling. They look at me for a moment or two, then bound away.

Three.

Tonight. 9:30 p.m. We leave the studio after our second dance lesson. We are buzzing with energy from the dancing, from holding each other close and learning to communicate with small motions and firm wrists. The night is perfect - crisp and cool but comfortable, with none of the past few weeks' persistent winds. We walk through downtown Boulder, coveting the charming (and insanely expensive) Victorian homes and cooking up plans for this summer's backyard transformation.

You can't handle the truth!

I've been meaning to put up something new, but the week has rapidly slipped away from me. Several long-languishing cases have suddenly sprung back to life, and along with a few brand new appeals they are keeping me rather busy. It's an energized sort of busy, which I much prefer over the oppressed and paralyzed kind of busy I'd been feeling for a few months. I have some fascinating and important legal issues to brief and some interesting new clients to get to know. That's the way I like it.

I'm also learning more than I ever imagined I would about military law. The federal civilian courts have jurisdiction over habeas corpus petitions by military personnel convicted by courts martial, and I've been assigned such a case on appeal. Military criminal procedure is a whole new animal, and rather a large and hairy one at that.

Of particular interest to me is the discovery that military criminal defendants enjoy several rights and protections to which civilian defendants are not entitled. For example, a military appellate defense lawyer is required to consult with her client about all possible claims the defendant wants to present to the court of criminal appeals. Even if the lawyer thinks those claims are entirely frivolous, she is required to submit a document identifying them as possible appeal issues her client wishes to bring to the court's attention. Another interesting feature of military procedure is that the appellate court - either the service branch court of criminal appeals or the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces - may on its own initiative or at a party's request order the court martial to hold a factfinding hearing to explore issues such as ineffective assistance of counsel and other matters not fully developed in the trial record. These hearings appear to be routinely conducted, and far less difficult to obtain than an evidentiary hearing in a federal postconviction proceeding. And as best I can gather after considerable research, the military appellate courts have broad powers to address issues of concern even where appellate defense counsel has not identified or briefed them.

At first, it surprised me that military defendants would enjoy stronger protections than do civilians. But as I thought about it more, I decided that it makes sense for many reasons. For one, in many cases the military must continue to pay a soldier who is incarcerated for a military conviction (even though he is no longer earning that pay), so convictions impose a significant financial burden on the armed forces. In addition, the military has an incentive to avoid unnecessary scrutiny by civilian courts of its courts martial procedures and decisions. If it affords greater constitutional protections than the civilian courts require, such outside scrutiny can be minimized. And as a general rule, the military takes a highly paternalistic approach to the lives of its personnel, which apparently extends to its law enforcement activities.

In any event, I'm still sorting out the intricacies of military law and procedure. Maybe I should start watching JAG reruns instead of Law & Order SVU?

In which I admit that all is not puppies and roses.

I had dinner last night with a long-time friend who reads my blog from time to time (Hi H.!). We hadn’t seen each other for months, so had a lot of catching up to do. When I told him about some unpleasantness I’ve been dealing with, he expressed surprise, and commented that from reading my blog, he’d figured I was blissfully happy in all aspects of my life these days.

And I am very, very happy in many respects. Living in Boulder and marrying my sweetheart and planning a wonderful wedding and a fabulous honeymoon in Italy and learning to skate ski and la dee da dee dah. Life is good. But in addition to some of the frustrations my friend and I discussed, there’s a larger issue that has been lurking in my shadow lately, and that I have so far revealed to no one but Steve.

It is this: I’m really, truly going blind. And I’m scared absolutely shitless about it.

Nothing new, you might think. Isn’t this blog ostensibly about my waning vision and whatnot? But this really is new. Because I’m really, really not seeing very well or very much, and I’m starting to think in concrete terms about learning how to function as a blind person. Should I start carrying a cane, at least at night? Perhaps a dog would be a better approach for me? Will I relatively soon be needing special-print materials? Special lighting inside and out? To learn Braille, or voice-recognition software? And in the not-so-far-back of my mind I wonder, how will I continue to live the active lifestyle I have so obstinately cultivated? And perhaps more troubling, how the hell will I (theoretically, someday, maybe) be able to parent like this?

These are all topics I’ve thought about - and broached en blog  - before, but they feel much more tangible, and imminent, and terrifying right now. I’m not at all ready for blindness, not ready to self-identify as blind, and not ready to be visibly identifiable as visually impaired. Yet even the safe and familiar spaces of my own home are becoming increasingly challenging to navigate, and I’m having an ever-tougher time laughing off the frequent shoulder-to-door-jamb collisions and knocked-over glasses.

My fear and sadness at all of this has left me moody, irritable, insecure, and unpredictable. I’ve taken a lot of that out on Steve, who somehow continues to love me and remains willing to stand by me through it all. But I can’t continue to dump all the pain on his sturdy shoulders. So here it is.

I’m turning off the comments to this post, because I’m not quite capable of having an actual conversation about this without breaking down. Could you, maybe, instead of commenting, consider clicking on the link at the top of my blog (or going straight to www.blindness.org) and making a donation to the Foundation Fighting Blindness? Because you know, if a cure/treatment/prosthesis/smallrayofhope were to beat out my eyes, it would really rock my world.

Blah blah wedding blah blah blah.

Wow. Thank you all for your kind, generous, and very very welcome comments. You've motivated me to continue tapping away in this space when time and energy permit. I'll try not to disappoint.

Somehow, this weekend, a coterie of evil little sprites kidnapped my brain and replaced it with Bride'sHead, revisited. Though I did take my first skate-skiing lesson (I think I am hooked on this wonderful, wonderful, but SO FREAKING EXHAUSTING new sport), it seems that virtually the entire rest of the weekend was sucked into a tulle-lined void of wedding madness. Proof that my brain has been swapped with that of a girlier girl was evidenced by a recent obsession with (the most fabulous) centerpieces (of all time), multiple shopping expeditions including a trip to an actual MALL on a gorgeous Sunday, and the headful of perfectly shelacked hair I wore to a fundraiser on Saturday night.

Monday brought my feet a bit closer to the ground. I have a few interesting new cases, which together with a spate of laudable recent Supreme Court decisions (no more executions of 16- and 17-year-olds!), leave no time for bridal excesses in my workaday world.