A mother's vision

Sometimes, it is nice to be blind. Because blindness completely shuts a person from things he wouldn’t wish to see. An ugly squirm, a scuffle, a person in pain and, yes, his mother’s face.
When I think of my mother, I only remember a fair face with fine features that blossoms to life with a bright smile. She was in her early 40s when I lost my sight about 18 years ago. Nearing her sixty, I’m sure age may have left its ugly scars and would have blemished its grace. That’s not the way I would like to remember the woman who has been the patron saint to her disabled son.
Of course, my mother has been showing signs of aging in every other sense. For someone who stood hours waiting at the railway station to pick up her blind son coming from college, maintaining calm has become a problem. Her snide and snappy retorts even for a mild objection reveals how her once agile body and a strong mind are giving into aging faster than anyone of us had expected. But in the darkened chambers of my visual cortex, I always recall the poise with which she reacted to my rapid progress to blindness.
While mothers in general dream of their children, the one who is trusted with a challenged child end up nurturing the dreams of that child. I know that is not easy, since accepting the disability of the child is quite difficult for a parent. They may find it harder to cope with the struggles of the child, but they need to be positive and practical to make life easy for the child. In the midst of rapidly darkening world around me, mother made me see the lights of hope. Of course, through that process I barely realised how her strength had supported me, when I had none at all from other quarters.
While the whole family was against my decision to go to college, mom was the only one who encouraged me to pursue my studies the way I wanted it. Her son’s disability certainly drew her attention to the plights of other children with disability. She enjoyed the sight of my fellow disabled students (in college) savouring the sweets she had brought for them and often remarked: “For someone who had no great qualification, this is the only way to make these children happy.”  
Aging may have marred her beauty and weakened her limbs, but even nature seems powerless to stop the flow of love from her heart. Mom is still the loving, caring person she has been for all our lives. A disabled person may have been denied of many things available to others, but mother’s love is certainly not the one.