Yolanda Nava was a longtime journalist, and perhaps it is partially for this reason she greeted the sudden blindness in her right eye with curiosity more than anything else. A mind trained to observe with some detachment will do so no matter the subject.
So, her first reaction was: “Oh, this is interesting.”
Nava is not a woman given to panic. Panic is inconsistent with practicality, and she is nothing if not practical. Besides, she says, she had no reason to think that a month later, she would lose sight in her left eye too. She certainly had no reason to think that nearly two years later, she would still be blind.
Later, Nava would learn her reaction was not uncommon. It can be hard to tell where optimism ends and denial begins. It is much easier to mark when denial ends and optimism flowers again. Nava would learn this too.
She is a longtime journalist, as I mentioned, but I do not realize until I am sitting across from her that she is that Yolanda Nava — Emmy-award winning journalist, author, well-known leader in Latino cultural and education circles in New Mexico, where she lives, and in California, where she was born and spent much of her career.
Her doctors eventually reached a diagnosis of a rare autoimmune disorder called Wegener’s granulomatosis. Nava has recovered and one day might regain her sight, though she cannot count on that.
I met her recently through reader JoAnn Henson. Henson lives near the Colorado Center for the Blind in Littleton and not too long ago, she encountered one of its students.
“Are you visually impaired?” Henson asked.
“No,” he said. “I’m blind.”
They became friends. She met Nava in much the same way.
Nava, too, was a student at the center. It has students from across the country. Some lost or are losing their sight. Some never had it. They are of all ages and walks of life and for nine months they live in center apartments and learn to reclaim their independence. That’s learning Braille and negotiating solo the 5-mile trip from the center’s apartments to its main building. It’s making meals and taking woodworking class, where, yes, students use table saws. It’s river rafting, rock climbing, gardening, grocery shopping, PowerPoint presentations. It’s confidence every cane-tapped step of the way.
“We aren’t taking care of people here. We are empowering people here,” says center director Julie Deden.
That Deden is blind surprises me, which tells you something about my own preconceptions.
Nava arrived at the center in October, 14 months after losing her sight. “I don’t think I crumbled until I got here. I couldn’t. I had things I needed to get done, and I just plowed through it. But when I got here, I was out of my milieu, and the training is so hard. It’s not just that I’m facing the reality of my blindness. It’s frustration and grief.”
She has walked into the middle of the street, into poles, off curbs. Her fingertips feel blunt and awkward against the tiny dots of Braille. But Nava is an optimist, and it is her optimism that teaches no experience is without its lessons, one of which was offered to her by a woman she met at the mall.
The woman told Nava she was in a wheelchair and was losing her sight to macular degeneration. They hit it off and agreed to lunch the next week. Upon their second meeting the woman told Nava: “You have no idea what it means to me that you experience me for who I am and not for my disabilities.”
It is the temptation, and one I experienced, to describe the process of adaptation as courageous. It’s a well-meaning, but condescending description. More to the point, courage has nothing to do with it. You do what you must do because life demands it. But it is a remarkable thing to witness, to reaffirm, such resilience.
“The assumption is you can’t do anything when you can’t see,” Nava says. “But I’m still here, and I still have a brain. I just can’t see.”
Tina Griego writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
