The spring of 1960 was a particularly good one for me. I was fourteen, and a few months earlier I had gotten contact lenses. Without the thick glasses I had been wearing since I was six that made me self-conscious, I became more confident and outgoing. Home movies of our family's Passover Seder that year showed me uncharacteristically waving and looking straight into the camera as I read from the Haggadah (the book used at the Seder to tell the Passover story). A few short months later, while eating a hot corned beef sandwich with my aunt and uncle, I began to see a rainbow of colors in my left eye. My left retina had detached, and soon the right one did, too. Over the course of the next two years, and after a number of operations, I became blind.

   My retinal surgeon, Dr. Edward Norton, was a compassionate physician who finally had to deliver the news that nothing more could be done. I cannot remember the feelings that swept through me, but the next morning I announced to my parents that I was not getting out of bed, nor was I going to school. My father knelt beside me and cried, saying he did not know what else to do for me. I had never seen him express such painful emotions, and I remember the sensation of my hand patting his bald head as I comforted him and told him I would go to school. I did just that.

   Surprisingly, the adjustment to the mechanics of being blind was not as difficult as you might guess. The hardest part of losing my sight, the most painful part, was losing my friends. Looking back, it is understandable that teenagers would feel awkward with someone they first knew as a sighted person. Yet one boy, Bobby Green, remained my good friend for many years, and to this day I am grateful.

   One day my Grandpa Charlie gave me a book he claimed to have found on the train; at the time, I believed him. Farewell to Fear told the story of Tomi Keitlen, blinded in her thirties, who was a parent, an athlete and a downhill and slalom skier at that. She also worked as business manager for Bonnie Prudden, physical fitness guru. After reading Tomi's book, I decided that this was how I was going to be blind – I would live a full life.

   I called Tomi, who invited me to meet her in New York City. She was making a television show about blind people to present them in a positive light, and she asked me to be in it. Cameras rolling, we walked through Central Park, stopping to smell the blossoms, exploring the Museum of Modern Art and touching wonderful sculptures like Picasso's Goat. I held Tomi's right arm as she held the harness of her guide dog with her left. I was struck by how gracefully and fluidly she moved. I knew it was only a matter of time until I would get a dog, too.

   When I was a senior in high school, I applied to three colleges. Cornell University expressed concerns that a blind person could not manage the hilly terrain and negotiate the distance between classes. They rejected me. The University of Vermont accepted me, but said they expected me to bring a reader along. The University of Rochester simply accepted me, period. That meant so much to me – no concerns, no questions about how a blind person could negotiate hills, no requests to provide a reader – they just accepted me.

  During my four years at Rochester, I discovered I could people my world with those who did not care that I was blind. However, it was not so in the matter of love. As a junior, I fell in love with a girl, but after dating for many months, she told me that her parents insisted she end our relationship because of my blindness. They threatened to take her out of school if she did not. Losing her was even more painful than losing my sight and my friends as a teenager.

   That same year, I found myself saying, “I am going to become a psychologist.” I liked science, and treating people in therapy was something I felt capable of doing as a blind person. That was also when I decided to get a dog.

   During the summer of 1967, I went to the Seeing Eye and met my guide dog, a female German shepherd named Liebe. Our first walk was exhilarating. This was the first time since I had become blind that I felt free to flow quickly and safely through space without any hesitation, without needing a cane or the arm of another. At the exact moment Liebe stopped, I stopped. “Move your foot out a quarter of an inch,” my trainer told me. I did, and there was the curb. Bending down, with tears falling, I hugged Liebe.

   I returned home with instructions from the trainer to stay put for a month to give Liebe time to adjust. The Beatles dominated the airwaves that summer, and Haight Ashbury in San Francisco was a mecca for hippies. Three days later I told my parents I was going to Haight Ashbury. I was determined to go and told them I would hitchhike there or they could pay my fare. To their credit, with their hearts in their mouths, they said yes and off Liebe and I went.

   What an adventure! Flying to California, taking a bus into San Francisco, having someone say, “Hey, do you need an assist?” and replying, “I need a place to stay.” Liebe and I spent time in Golden Gate Park, wandered the streets and sat on the sidewalk while listening to the Beatle's new “Sergeant Pepper” album. We slept on the floor, sharing space with many others, and ate homemade potato-and-hot-dog stew.

   When I entered Case Western Reserve University’s psychology program for my MA and PhD, I felt I had finally begun to come into my own. Work as a clinical instructor at Case followed, then post-graduate affiliation with local mental health organizations and a private practice. I branched out in my personal life as well. I began to cross-country ski, swim long distance, develop friendships and have a number of romantic relationships. In my late thirties, I married Rosemary; we have been together eighteen years and have two incredible children, Everett and Isaac.
   Professionally, my work gives me great joy. Perhaps my blindness encourages clients to feel they are not being judged superficially. For whatever reason, I forge a deep connection with them. I am committed to helping people benefit from all I have learned on my journey of self-discovery.

   Becoming blind could be perceived as closing off many possibilities. But from the moment I knew I would not see I began to make a series of positive choices: I will go to school; I will have friends; I will get a dog; I will travel; I will become a psychologist; I will say yes to marriage, a choice that, knowing how deeply I wanted children, was actually quite simple. I became the blind person I perceived Tomi Keitlen to be – the one with the graceful, fluid, full life.

Dr. Andrew J. Hoffman has practiced clinical psychology in Beachwood for nearly 30 years. He is also an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. For more information, or to contact him, please visit www.clevelandpsychologist.com.

Photos by Bob Perkoski.