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fruitymangopea

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            I always put a face with a name.  My imagination is highly developed.  I hear a name like ‘Rya’ and I already have a face forming in my mind.

            For example, Rya is a sixteen year old girl.  Her real name is Mariah Ramirez.  She lives in America with her mother.  Her father and the rest of her family live in Mexico.

She has an angled face with few pimples. Long, curved eyelashes frame her large chocolate brown eyes.  She has thick, shoulder length, wavy hair, which she loves to wear in a high pony tail. 

She loves to play softball; she pitches.  She strikes out almost every batter that enters the batter’s box. 

She also is a great pianist.  Her favorite composer is Beethoven.  She will sit at her piano and just play his pieces for hours.

Rya also loves to paint; she isn’t very gifted with a paintbrush.  She has painted a scarlet red crab; her name is Cindy.  Rya has given Cindy an undersea home.  Occasionally, she paints Cindy friends like Charlie the cod, or Olivia the oyster.

In between softball games and piano recitals, she drives herself to the beach.  She will lie out and tan for fifteen minutes on each side.  Then she will swim with her best friend, Josh.

Now when I actually meet Rya, I discover that her interests are entirely different, as is her name.  She is actually named Mary, Mary Stout. Everyone just calls her Rya.

She writes short stories.  She has read some of her stories to me.  They are very good, better than most college English majors. 

I used to be a professor at Ohio University.  I taught my favorite subject, English.  I loved my job and I was well paid, but I was forced to resign.  Ohio University did not want to pay for my assistant, who wrote down the grades on my students papers, since I was unable to because of my blindness.

Rya, is also a cook.  She makes amazing breads, cookies, cheesecake, anything.  When I tell her I’m hungry I can hear the smile forming on her lips.  I always tell her to surprise me with a new dish.

Rya also likes to help the disabled…that is how we came to meet.

When I was told that I would need an aide to get around my own home, I threw a fit.  I’m only twenty for Pete’s sake, I thought to myself, hey I guess every sightless person needs an aide.  That was five years ago.

Six months before I was told about my aid, I went to the library.  I insisted on going alone.  Just because I’m blind doesn’t mean that I’m helpless.  After searching through several brail books for several hours, I began my long trek home.

Halfway there, I got mugged.

My parents thought that I actually wanted to get the bruises I came home with, that I did it for attention.  Who in their right mind would want to get mugged?  My parents kicked me out after we had a fight.  I didn’t know where to go. 

Instead of crying over my misfortune, I traveled as fast as I could to Olivia’s house.  She loved me more than anyone else in the world.  Olivia understood my need to be independent, and she respected it.

By the time I reached her house I was a wreck.  I hadn’t eaten in three days and I had walked as fast as I could.  On the there I twisted my ankle, caught a cold, and traveled over a miles with nothing but my cane and laptop.  Olivia took me in and made me well.

Ever since then I have wished I could see.  I want to know who ruined the life of a poor blind man. Why ruin someone’s life who has never been able to see anything. But of course they decide to rip my life apart at its seams.

Once I was well again, Olivia took me house shopping.  She helped me shop for a ranch style house with easy access rooms.  Olivia was going to help me move in but her daughter went into labor.  I was stuck getting used to my new surroundings on my own. 

I hate accepting help from strangers, which is why I would not utter a single word the entire time that I was with Rya.  Instead she would talk to me.  She told me of the hardships of being a college freshman.  I never had to experience those, I was helped through college with an aide, and schoolwork was all I focused on.  I could tell she trusted me; she told me so much.

I began speaking to her.  Never much, just a few short comments here or there in one of her stories.  Slowly I began to pour my life back into her.  I had found a best friend.

I remember my twenty-first birthday.  Rya had taken me to the beach.  We sat together in the soft sand for a while.  I could hear the waves crashing against the beach.  It was a beautiful sound.  The seagulls squawked overhead.  The sounds of children playing Frisbee in the sand was a short distance away.  I was completely at ease with myself and my surroundings.  Suddenly, Rya stood.

“Take off your shoes,” she said with a smile on her face.

“Why?” I said with a confused look on my face.

“Don’t you trust me?” I could hear her face change into a pout.  Not fair.  She knows that I cannot say no to her, she’s like the granddaughter I never had.

“Of course I do.”

“Then come on!” I had no choice.  I took off my shoes and socks.  Then she led me through the warm, dry sand. 

After about twenty steps, the feeling of the sand changed.  I could feel how the tiny grains stuck together verses before when they would just fall apart.

“Incoming,” Rya said.

Cold water rushed over my toes, chilling them to the bone.  I jumped and almost fell over into the freezing water.  Rya tightened her grip on me and soon I became stable.  After several minutes I was alright standing in the water by myself. 

Suddenly I had an idea.  I listened to the vibrations of the water, feeling them pulse through my skin.  I soon was able to pick out the natural ones from the ones Rya was making. 

I sank my fingers into the icy water.  I plastered a look of amazement on my face.  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, I brought my hands up quickly, successfully spraying Rya with handfuls of water. 

“Augh!” she screamed, “It’s cold!”

“Oh I’m sorry Rya,” I said while laughing, “I didn’t know you were there.”

“Oh your gonna get it now!”

She sprayed me with water, but I had been waiting for that.  I began to bombard her with splash after splash of the cool water.  I heard her running away from my splashes and then her water movements stopped.  I was alone in the water.

“Here let me help you,” she said coming back to me.

“No, Rya. I would like to do this on my own…please,” I said.  She stepped back onto the beach.

I put my hands back into the water.  I turned until the waves were being stopped by my palms.  Then I started to move forward. 

I tested each step before I put my weight on my foot.  So far so good, I thought. 

I felt less water on my calves the farther forward I went.  Soon I was out of the water completely.

Rya started cheering.  I had done it.  I felt footsteps coming quickly to me.  Rya was hugging me, and  I was crying.

“You did it,” she said.  I felt a salty puddle on my shoulder and I knew she was crying too.

From that day I had set a new goal for myself.  I wanted to paint.  I wanted to paint all my happiness from that day into a painting.

Every day after, I began trying my hand at painting. Never had I been so determined to do anything.  Every time I failed I became more determined to make something of myself, to paint a painting.

I went to the library to research paintings by blind people. Instead I discovered something very interesting.  There is a way to change Microsoft word so it will type everything I say.  I decided to give it a try.

After having Rya set it up for me, I told her to leave.  I did the same thing every time that I painted, so she wasn’t surprised.

I began describing my twenty-first birthday in as much detail as I could.  I put emotion into my speech as well.  I was almost telling the story to another person.  The computer typed every word that came out of my mouth.

When I was finished, Rya came back inside.  She read what I had “typed” and I could tell she was crying.

“Oh my,” she said between sniffles, “…this is amazing.  I never knew that I had given you that much.  You have a gift for this.  This is coming from a friend, and an author.  You should definitely keep writing.”

From that moment on, I wrote a story every day.  Several years later I published a short story book, the year after that I wrote a novel.  I am currently working on an autobiography.