I am sitting here in the dark, sweaty and hot with a head light on my head since our power has gone out. Welcome to Houston! We just got back from a wonderful trip visiting some friends in the not so stinking hot Lake Tahoe area. After settling the screaming children, one who was frightened and the other who was woken up by the frightened one, I started contemplating what to do with my evening. I mean what does one do without electricity! I had already walked the dog, cleaned the kitchen, filled up the water bottles and found all the flashlights and candles. As you can tell I decided to write a blog post. I knew my laptop had battery power left so instead of becoming one with nature and appreciating the dark and quiet, I opted for the hum and bright light of the laptop.

As I mentioned above we just came back from vacation. The boys did great especially Nash, nothing keeps that kid down for long. Loved being on a boat, loved playing on the beach at the Lake, loved the paddling pool, loved to run for the road, loved climbing anything he could find. That kid is going to be an adventurer someday or at least I hope so. I hope that this spirit that lives inside him never gets knocked out of him or pushed down. I wish I had half the enthusiasm he has for life.

What became apparent from this trip into unknown territory on Nash’s part was that he is showing some depth perception issues. Depth perception is described as the visual ability to perceive the world in three dimensions (3D) and the distance of an object. I already knew that he had some trouble seeing 1 or 2 steps in front of him particularly if the flooring proceeding the step is the same color. He has a habit of walking full speed over it, as you can imagine that means he is prone to falling over. At our friends house we noticed that he had an issue leaving their garage. There was a strip of metal or wood that joined the garage flooring to the cement outside. He wasn’t sure how to tackle this so he decided to do it like he would the stairs in our house. He turned around, got down on his belly and then attempted to slide down. The second time this happened we were at the airport leaving Tahoe. He stopped bang in the middle of the walkway and ran up and down a metal strip that was joining two types of flooring, he then proceeded to the edge by the wall where he began to lift his foot up as if to step over something and then decided better of it. In the end I had to grab his hand and help him ‘over’. Because he doesn’t read, write or really talk yet it is really hard to grasp how his vision affects him especially since he is such a wonderfully happy, outgoing and active child. I really don’t know if depth perception improves for him or if it stays challenging his whole life (perhaps a question I need to pose to the albinism community). If you see a person randomly stopping in the street or at the top of some steps and looking like they are having trouble maneuvering over or around think of my little guy as it could be him out there having a real struggle with something not obvious to the well sighted.

Power came on and so did the air.. phew (first world problems).

Featured Image – black and white image of Nash wearing a checked shirt, hat and glasses, standing at water table lifting up a water wheel with a paddling pool to the right of him.