by Abigail L. Johnson
When you’ve been able to see all your life, losing your vision to age-related macular degeneration can be devastating. Some elderly people are reluctant to admit they have poor vision and so do not seek the help they need. In some cases, well-meaning relatives attempt to remove their visually impaired loved ones from their own homes and place them in assisted living facilities or nursing homes where they will be safe. Such is the case for Addie Marsh, the main character in Pam Rice’s novel “Coming to My Senses.” When I read this book, I found it so inspiring and true to life that I would like to share my experience of the book and its author with others.
Pam Rice lives in Beulah, Colo. and is a rehabilitation teacher for the state division of vocational rehabilitation. She teaches adults who are visually impaired. A graduate of the University of Southern Colorado, she has always wanted to write and, according to a recent article in “The Pueblo Chieftain,” she actually sold a story in 1976 to a teen magazine. But marriage, family, and a job got in the way of her earlier ambitions. Finally, in 1997, when her children were grown, she began work on “Coming to My Senses,” a novel inspired by her work with people who are visually impaired. After several years of writing and editing, the book was finally published in 2002 by Five Star, a subsidiary of the Thorndike publishing empire. The book is available on cassette from the Colorado State Library’s talking book program and can be accessed by local talking book libraries.
In Rice’s novel, Addie, a woman in her mid-seventies, is losing her vision to macular degeneration. She lives alone in a rural mountain village in Colorado. Her son Joe and his family live in a town about 30 miles away. As the story begins, Joe is trying unsuccessfully to convince his mother she needs to move to an assisted living facility. When he arrives at his mother’s cabin unexpectedly, he finds her fast asleep in a rocker on her porch and stew burning on the stove because she had the heat on too high.
As the story unfolds, Addie gradually comes to terms with her visual impairment. Her close friend and physician encourages her to join a support group where she makes new friends. When the group’s facilitator, a rehabilitation teacher, offers to help Addie learn daily living and mobility skills, she hesitates at first. But after a fall gives her a concussion, she becomes convinced that she needs this kind of help. Addie has the appliances in her home marked with tactile labels, learns orientation and mobility skills, and starts learning braille as well. Eventually, she convinces Joe she is perfectly capable of living independently in the isolated mountain cabin where she has lived for years.
There are several subplots to this story. First of all, the story of Addie’s struggle to come to terms with her visual impairment is intermingled with flashbacks from Addie’s past. Addie and her sister, orphaned as small children, were raised by a rich uncle in Denver. Addie married her first husband just before World War II and he was soon sent overseas after she became pregnant with her first son. He was killed in action soon after the child’s birth. Addie’s second husband was an Army buddy of her first husband; Joe was born soon after they married. She and her family eventually ended up in the little cabin in the mountains where the novel is set.
As Addie slowly adjusts to her visual impairment, she befriends a teenage girl who moves in with her so-called husband in the cabin next door to Addie’s. She also befriends a gentleman who moves into an old lumber camp across the lake from her. This gentleman is a loner at first, but by the end of the book, Addie has managed to draw him out. All of these subplots make “Coming to My Senses” a delightful book to read.
Being visually impaired myself and working with senior citizens who are visually impaired, I found “Coming to My Senses” very realistic. Addie and the other participants in her support group are like several of the elderly people I have met in the support groups I have facilitated. In fact, Pam Rice’s portrayal of visual impairment convinced me that she herself is visually impaired. When I mentioned this to a friend in Colorado who participated in one of the support groups she used to facilitate, and who recommended the book to me, he said, “I hope she’s not visually impaired. She’s driven me to some of our meetings!”
I realize now that Pam Rice is one of those sighted people who really understands visual impairment and I recommend her book to anyone interested in learning more about visual impairment and reading an uplifting story at the same time.