Darkness

I spent hours after work on Thursday hemming and hanging sheets of black plastic. Combined with the artificial ceiling my coworkers had suspended over the row, these sheets were going to create a very dark narrow hallway for our coworkers' children to shiver down, trying to avoid flaming skulls, skeletal hands and inflated pumpkins and ghosts.

On Friday I walked around the office, capturing my handiwork on film. As I ducked into the dark and scary hallway, I saw John's wife and mother-in-law stopping to say hi. On second glance I realized that John's mother-in-law couldn't appreciate my efforts because her world is permanently enshrouded in darkness.

While she couldn't see our decorations, I wondered what she thought as she and her daughter squeezed through the hallway, hunching their shoulders to avoid hitting their head on the cardboard and plastic ceiling. The hallway is narrow enough that they couldn't walk side-by-side so she was forced to walk slightly behind her daughter, holding her arm for guidance. They must have weaved from one side of the hallway to the other as they moved to avoid the balloons and other decorations hanging along the walls. When they got past the obstacles to John's cubicle, his wife leaned into his cube to get his attention. Her mom edged around her body, feeling the plastic curtain slither along her arm as she tried to join the conversation.

Standing there observing their conversation gave me an entirely different perspective on the decorations I had labored over. I was instantly grateful for the ease that my sight gives me, but also intrigued imagining the completely different experience John's mother-in-law had in that dark hallway.