September 23, 2024
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Write Team: Imagine not being able to see or hear

By Winifred Hoffman, Write Team

WINIFRED HOFFMAN I have lived in the area for 37 years on my late husband’s family farm where we raise dual purpose cattle, organic crops, sheep, chickens, vegetables, fruit, and down-to-earth children. My five children are all grown and pursuing their various interests in everything from technology to farming to writing. My six grandchildren are uncovering their own aptitudes and fascinations, which is fun to watch and participate in. I have loved being on the Write Team for most of the last 16 years. I’m thrilled to continue the conversations with you, dear reader friends. I will welcome you into my cow pasture, front yard, and house full of books as we keep reflecting together on life’s complexities and pleasures.

Think about this. What if your only contact with the world around you was through your senses of touch, smell and taste? How would you communicate? How would you figure out what was going on?

I have been fascinated with Helen Keller essentially all my life. I recently reread her autobiography and letters from her teachers and associates, and wow, she was, indeed, a phenomenon and an inspiration. Likewise are the many people, most notably her teacher and companion Anne Sullivan, who helped her overcome the isolation and frustration of being blind and deaf from an early age.

I think most students learn about her in school, how she was taught to communicate with sign language spelled into her hand. She also learned to speak and read lips, which were incredible feats. She loved to read and study, and was a talented and vivid writer.

The profound labor she and her teacher put into her education, all the way through college, was exhausting and beyond the capability or ambition of almost anyone else.

And she was adventurous! She described going boating on a lake, by herself, riding on a tandem bicycle, sailing in Nova Scotia and sitting at the seaside feeling the waves wash over her.

She gloriously described her sensations in the woods, garden and pond, showing an awareness beyond most of us with all five senses. Reading her accounts has heightened my own mindfulness of the beauty around us.

A vital aspect of her education is dear to my heart and can be applied universally to children who can see and hear, though it is more difficult to do in a classroom setting rather than with a tutor. She was allowed to explore, ask questions and follow her curiosity instead of being confined to a rigid course of study.

I was thrilled to discover two precious newsreels online of Helen Keller herself, and her teacher, showing how they talked with their hands, and how she learned to speak.

Her vivacious spirit shines through in all her writing and in these film clips. I, for one, have been changed by learning more about her life, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Let me close with her own words:

“Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist as I sit alone and wait at life’s shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter. Fate, silent, pitiless, bars the way. Fain would I question his imperious decree; for my heart is still undisciplined and passionate; but my tongue will not utter the bitter, futile words that rise to my lips, and they fall back into my heart like unshed tears. Silence sits immense upon my soul. Then comes hope with a smile and whispers, ‘There is joy in self-forgetfulness.’ So I try to make the light in others’ eyes my sun, the music in others’ ears my symphony, the smile on others’ lips my happiness.”

Winifred Hoffman of Earlville is a farmer, breeder of dual-purpose cattle and a student of life. She can be reached at newsroom@mywebtimes.com

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