Balance

Ever since I started going blind my mind has tried filling in the blanks for me. It's called Charles Bonnet Syndrome. I "see" things that aren't there but my mind knows they should be.

Sometime last month the Charles Bonnet Syndrome stopped. Now I feel more blind than before.

If you've ever looked through a telescope you know it can be disorienting. You see objects in abstract, without the context of their surroundings. You might see a bird on a tree branch in the forest but you have no clue which tree the bird is in. As soon as you lower the scope you lose the bird in the forest and if you try to find it through the scope again you don't know where to look.

My tunnel vision is like that.

I keep a picture of my wife on the wall in our bedroom so I can see her when she's not here.

 

The picture is centered between the corner and the window, far enough from each of them that I don't see the window or the corner when I look at the picture.

I constantly think the picture is crooked, that someone bumped into it and now it's about 20 or 30 degrees off kilter. But it's not - I'm just seeing it on a blank wall, with no window sill or room corner to orient up and down for me.

Now that the Charles Bonnet Syndrome has stopped I find myself questioning my balance. I don't have a visual horizon anymore, no way to optically verify I'm not leaning to one side. Instead, I see a picture on the wall that seems off kilter to me and I think I'm leaning to make the picture look like that.

My wife has noticed. I start to take a step forward, then pull my foot back and grab onto the doorway because my sense of balance is telling me something different from what my eyes see.

This isn't something I anticipated when the doctors told me I was going blind.

***

Yesterday our mortgage banker pre-qualified us for a home loan. I'm in touch with two realtors, one in Knoxville and one in Roanoke. I'm about 80% certain we'll end up in Roanoke. My wife is getting excited - she spends more time looking through the realty sites than I do.

There's a home still under construction she really likes. We'll take a tour when we visit in a couple weeks. I told her to pick the house she thinks is beautiful because in another year I won't be able to see it anyway. All I ask for is doorways tall enough that I won't hit my head and floors level enough that I won't trip and fall.

***

Ariel just called. My wife and I asked her yesterday if we could hire her to go to Roanoke and see some homes for sale if they come available at a time when we aren't able to check them out. She said she will.

But today she needs a little reassurance she's doing the right thing. We're leaving our kids behind when we move, and although they'll all be adults, Ariel wants to make certain our decision isn't going to traumatize the other kids in the family. If it will, she wants no part in helping us find a house. She won't participate in adding trauma.

I'm glad she called. I needed to hear that perspective. Yes, I imagine it's hard when your parents decide to leave the city in which they raised you. It can't be fun when you and your children seem less important to your father than a waterfall and a hiking trail.

I never thought that way. I always felt a person who lived their entire life in one place was wasting their life, and the further from your home you went, the more variety you'd be exposed to. It's okay to move back to your home town to complete the circle in your final years, but it's a tragedy to never leave.

Thinking back on it now I see every move I ever made took me further and further from the place of my birth. To me, that seems right. It seems so right I didn't consider the alternative.

San Antonio is about 65% Hispanic and Hispanic culture is multi-generational families. Children and their grandparents often live together in the same house, or at least in the same neighborhood. This, to my kids, probably seems right in the same way that moving progressively further and further away from the familiar seems right to me.

I'm not having second thoughts about moving, but I'm realizing I need to be more aware of how this might seem to our kids. I love all you boinkies and grandbabies. We'd be happy if any of you decide to move into whichever community we choose, but San Antonio isn't where we want to stay forever.

***

Anyway, back to my wife. Her enthusiasm for the move is ramping up and we both agree it's probably best if we buy a place this year so I can move soon and she will stay here until May.

Because we already own a home free and clear and we plan on downsizing by more than 500 square feet we aren't worried about interest rates. The sale of our existing home should pay off any home we end up buying, or at least pay 90% of the principal. We are willing to spend a little more if the right home comes up but neither of us want to be in a mortgage for more than five years tops.

It's still a seller's market, but it's slowly correcting. There's a chance it will crash faster than we think, meaning we could end up buying our new home in a seller's market then selling our old home half a year later in a buyer's market. It could be 2007 all over again, but even if that's the case, we're trading in 2,200 square feet and getting something closer to 1,600. It's safer to buy and sell at the same time but if we wait six months it can't go too bad for us, even if the market turns and the timing is wrong.

That's my perspective. But retinitus pigmentosa isn't the only cause of tunnel vision, and I have to remain aware of my balance when the markets or the family seem to be tilting off kilter. That's why Ariel's phone call was so important to me.