Mrs. Cooke was an O&M, or Orientation and Mobility teacher, at Francis Blend. From the time I was in kindergarten, she would come to my classroom and call each of our names, pulling us out of class for a one-on-one lesson with her on something nobody in my family had to learn in school. When it was my turn, she took me to the mobility room where several teachers like her were working with students.
“Well, Laurie, do you know why you’re here?” Mrs. Cooke said, sounding friendly, but underneath lurked the voice of someone who could be strict and stern.
“I’m here for mobility,” I said, matter-of-factly.
“Yes you are,” Mrs. Cooke chuckled genially. “But do you know what that means?”
My heart sank. I didn’t know the answer, and I hated getting the answer to a teacher’s question wrong.
“It means that you’re going to learn how to get around by yourself,” Mrs. Cooke answered for me.
“Without my mom?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t understood her correctly.
“Mom’s not always going to be around to take you places,” Mrs. Cooke said shortly and continued without pause. “Now, do you have any brothers and sisters?”
“One brother,” I said, still nursing the shock of Mrs. Cooke’s statement that one day I’d have to go it alone without Mom.
“Is he sighted or is he blind?”
“He can see.”
“Okay, then he can get around by seeing where he’s going, by looking at street signs, building addresses, and so forth. You, my dear, are going to have to learn several skills that your brother probably won’t ever have to think about. Now just give me one second. I’ll be right back.”
I heard the metal drawer of a file cabinet opening and Mrs. Cooke rummaging inside of it. In a moment, she was sitting next to me again, opening a package.
“Your first, brand-spanking-new cane,” she said cheerfully, handing me the strangest object I had ever held in my hands. It felt like a bunch of small metal tubes held together by an elastic loop. One of the tubes had rubber covering it.
“Okay, take the loop off,” she said. When I let the elastic go, the tubes began to unfold, and with several little clicks they became one long aluminum stick. Mrs. Cook showed me a small round tip at the bottom of the cane and told me that the rubber covering was the grip I would hold onto when using this new stick, which she called a cane.
“Canes come in all sizes,” Mrs. Cooke said. “See this one?” She handed me a large cane that was several heads taller than me. “Canes are supposed to reach the middle of your chest. When it starts to get shorter than that, you’ll need a new size.”
“I’ll never need one of those,” I said, indicating the large cane. “I’ll never be that tall.”
“Oh, yes you will,” Mrs. Cooke laughed. “You just wait. The cane is designed to protect you, to act as your eyes. It will hit obstacles to your left and right, and you will have to learn to decide how to get around them. If you use the cane correctly, you shouldn’t bump into anything or fall into dangerous places.”
She led me outside where she showed me how to tap my new cane back and forth: to the right when I stepped down with my left foot, and to the left when I stepped down with my right foot. It made a hollow, tinny sound as it hit the ground. Then she showed me a technique called “touch and drag,” which meant that I would follow the building line on one side to help me detect pathways and doorways.
“You’ll need touch and drag to find things like your classroom,” she said. “See, Room 1 is the first doorway on your left. Room 17 is the mobility room, and Mrs. Schindler’s room is eight doors down on your left after you round the corner.”
She had me practice finding the mobility room, counting the doors from my kindergarten class. Then, she taught me a technique called “squaring off,” which meant I would put my back against a wall and walk straight from a certain point to another destination. I would square off with the wall two doorways past my classroom and walk straight across to the computer room.
I met with Mrs. Cooke once a week during my first two years at Blend, first learning my way around the building, then branching out and counting the building support posts on my left side, 1, 2, 3, until I hit Irma who sold me my hot lunch. One day, Mrs. Cooke had me sit at the table where she placed a foam board in front of me with four cardboard squares glued onto it, which she told me represented four blocks, and the blank spaces between them represented the streets.
“This is a map of an intersection,” she explained. She proceeded to describe stop signs and traffic lights, as well as to show me what parallel and perpendicular mean. She indicated the north, east, south, and west, and northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest corners of intersections. She explained that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. These concepts were easy enough to understand on a map, but when it was just me navigating the real thing, it was hard to remember where I was, even if I had seen the whole scope of it in miniature just minutes before.
“Laurie,” Mrs. Cooke said in a stern voice when I had guessed that I was facing north when I in fact was facing south. “What are the clues again?”
“The sun, I forgot the sun,” I said hastily. “Mrs. Cooke, it’s hard for me to remember where everything is when I’m not looking at it.”
“I know,” she said. “Sighted people can see the whole picture, just like the one I showed you in the classroom. You, however, don’t have anything for reference but the place your feet are planted on, and your memory of what I just showed you.”
After Mrs. Cooke came Mr. Kleinschtukker, Mrs. Hix, Mr. Takaguchi, and many others who continued to show me how to use the sun, familiar posts, changes in the ground’s texture, and the grass line on either side as guides to help me get from point a to point b.
As I grew taller, I was given new canes, along with more daunting and advanced tasks to tackle. As I walked from the place where my bus dropped me off in front of the school to class, I heard the sound of many canes tapping their way to their respective owner’s classes. Many canes sounded purposeful, confident, even enthusiastic about the independence they represented. I looked forward to the day that the cane made me feel just as able as my peers.