There is an old Irish ditty I often heard as a little boy. It goes something like this:
“One bright and guiding light that taught me wrong from right I found in my mother’s eyes. Those baby tales she told of roads all paved with gold I found in my mother’s eyes”.
As a blind child there was so much I found in my mother’s eyes. From as early as I can remember, she read me stories that spanned from Robert Lewis Stephenson’s adventures like “Treasure Island” to the book that always made both of us cry – “Black Beauty.”
As a teenager and young adult, her eyes made it possible for me to venture into the world knowing as she liked to say…”dressed to the nines.” And then, when I married my wife, Patty, my mother had strong opinions about the choice of tuxedo I should wear on our wedding day. I can still remember hearing her talk about how much she loved to see the first smiles on the faces of our children, Blythe & Tom.
As she grew older, it was her eyes that kept her connected to the world. Every morning, she read her Boston Globe from cover to cover, and on afternoon television she never missed her Soap Operas – “The Guiding Light,” and “Search for Tomorrow.” And then, there was the NBC Nightly News with her on-going crush on Tom Brokaw.
April is Women’s Eye Health Month along with celebrating the need for Sports Eye Safety. I can still remember my mother crying when she watched Cleveland Indian’s left-handed pitcher Herb Score hit with a line-drive costing him his sight. Research goes hand in hand with eye-safety to preserve vision. The Discovery Eye Foundation is committed to finding the answers that will preserve vision and allow women and mothers the blessing of seeing the smiles on the faces of the children they love.
Tom Sullivan