Junior School Magazine - Edition 6 (NOV 2018)

V isions of H ope My name is Felicity. I would describe what I look like, but up until yesterday I didn’t know. It was morning, but I couldn’t forget what had happened the night before. I am ten years old and last night I saw myself for the very first time. Last night I saw - I saw a lamp post, my hands and snow. Up until last night I had been blind since I was three. I’ll tell you everything. Not long after I left my house on the corner of Neptune Avenue, walking my Golden Retriever ‘Keeper’, I heard somebody crying. I turned around and instinctively asked what the matter was, but as I turned, my head felt light and dizzy. I had fainted once before. It felt like that, so I tried to take deep breaths, but I just couldn’t. It was like I wasn’t in control of my body. What happened next was indescribable, extraordinary, sensational and all the other words that I know - you know what I mean. I could see more than darkness. I think I saw, or maybe I imagined white glittering things that I felt were very cold. I had touched snow before and guessed that it must be snow. Then I saw what must have been a lamp post! I had run into these before and asked mum what they were. She told me that they light up the street, but I didn’t know what that meant. My comfortable darkness began to be replaced with so many colours and shapes. I looked down I was astonished, I saw my hands. I tried to move them, but I couldn’t then something distracted me. I could see a little girl of about my age was standing two or three metres away and not moving. That girl looked so pretty with long dark wavy hair and vibrant eyes that were coloured, but I don’t know the names of the colours. There was a distant look in them. Standing right beside her was a Golden Retriever with a bright collar and the girl was holding the dog’s leash in her skinny hands. I looked at my hands again and they were wet, and my shoulders were shaking and underneath the frightening happiness of seeing. I felt sadness and pain. It was like a blanket devouring the happiness. That’s when it hit me stronger than a colossal wave. I had been transferred into the crying person that I had heard before, and the young girl I could see was me. I was inside someone else and I had no control. I needed to get back. Thats when I felt that same dizzy feeling and just like that, my vision was stolen from me and I was back in my body – the girl that could no longer see. I called out to “keeper” and I heard her low bark. Keeper led me home. I had seen. I now think I know what seeing is. I think I know what light and shapes look like. I don’t know how to deal with it. Today I am going to try see my brother. I start by trying to think of my brother differently than I have ever before. I usually recognised him by sound and smell. By feeling his mood. I would feel him make things better in the way his big warm hands hoist me up on to his broad shoulders and he messes up my hair, then I turn around in circles to try to get dizzy. But this fleeting excitement always just fell back into darkness so quickly. I would grab a hard cover book from the table and wack it against my head in hopes of trying to convert my dizziness into sight. “Ugh” I moan as I can feel my family fussing over me and making wild speculations of how this happened. Trying to turn dizziness into sight never worked. It just gave me a headache. But today, I know (at least I’m sure) that I have seen. Maybe last night was just a dream, but things are different. But thinking I can control things, or thinking differently to be able to see, is just making it worse. I start to cry. I know it is babyish. I have never cried because I can’t see, but now I did. I can make out kind words being spoken by my family, but kind words can’t change my eyesight. Continued over page.. .

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JSM Edition 6