Living With & Loving A Blind Guy: A Special Birthday Wish From Guest Blogger Teresa Knapp

Chris and Teresa Knapp at rehearsal dinner for our wedding.

Happy birthday to my main man today! 40 friggin 7!!! What?!

So, you know best that I’m not a writer…In fact you know how much I HATE writing, so I hope this post for your new blog makes you happy on your birthday (and hopefully I don’t ruin it!)

For those of you out there reading this, Chris and I met in 1998. Our moms worked together at Holt High School, where both Chris and I graduated from, but since we were three years apart, we never actually knew each other in school. My mom was the part time bookkeeper and Camille (Chris’ mom) was the principal's secretary. Our moms introduced us, well, kind of. Anyway, I thought I’d tell the story of how we met, and in turn a little about what it’s like to be married to a blind guy.

There really is never a dull moment.  Even as I started writing this, we had to run to the post office in Holt to mail a couple of packages. I didn’t think twice about letting Chris run in, since he’s been going into this particular branch his entire life and knows the layout. When we pulled in, there was a car parked next to us and the woman driving it had gotten out just as Chris was getting out of our car. A few minutes later, we saw the lady heading back to her car right before we saw Chris coming back out. As the boys and I watched him walk back out to the parking lot, he started to approach the passenger side of the lady’s car next to us. By the time I could get the window down to say something to him, he had figured out it was the wrong car and was making his way back over to our Acadia. I was laughing and asking if he actually opened the door… he said he tried and luckily it was locked. Unfortunately, through all of the tears in my eyes I wasn’t able to see the lady's face when he tried to get in her car with her, but I can only imagine! Anyway, back to what it’s like… you know, being married to Chris.

The textbook Chris bought at the MSU Bookstore (that he didn’t need).

First of all, I never really had a choice, I just fell in love with him, that’s all I can say. The first time we met, I had just gotten out of a canoe with the twins I babysat for, Alex and Mason, in Dimondale where my parents lived on the river. We were briefly introduced as I rushed to get changed out of shorts and into something nicer as we were headed to a play in Vermontville, Forever Plaid, later that night. Camille, my future mother in law, her friend and Chris were going with us to the play. My mom had told me stories about Chris from having worked with Camille, so I had heard about him, but that night at the play I kept finding myself closing my eyes, just because I knew he was sitting down in the row in front of us, and I was trying to imagine what it would be like not being able to see any of the play. Several weeks went by when my mom mentioned something about inviting Chris to our family’s place in the U.P. for Labor Day weekend (Chris and my brother Jeff had started to hang out by this point, and had gone up to the “Ponderosa” earlier in the summer with my aunt and uncle, and my cousin Scott). Well since I had to work that Saturday morning and was going to have to drive up alone, my mom had suggested that maybe Chris and I could ride up together. I remember thinking no way am I riding 4 hours up north with a blind guy I barely know. So, I called him and said I had to run to the MSU bookstore for a textbook and asked him if he needed anything (we were both in college at the time). Well, I wouldn’t find out until much later, but the book he said he needed to get for one of his classes was something he completely made up, because like me, he too was nervous about riding up north together and thought the trip to the bookstore would be a good chance for us to get to know each other. We both got some textbooks from the store and ended up grabbing a late lunch at Cottage Inn. On the way to the U.P., we spent four hours laughing and talking. My mom still talks about watching us all weekend and how Chris would (conveniently) place his hand on my butt every time he needed to be guided somewhere. That was the first time I walked him off a curb without paying attention to what I was doing (definitely not the last), but I can still remember how I felt when I realized, wow, he has a lot to think about. From that weekend forward we were pretty much inseparable.

My mom and I had a conversation in our kitchen shortly after we started dating. I remember her asking me if I’ve really thought about spending my life with someone who could not see. At the time, Chris was on all kinds of medication that had helped save the sliver of shadow vision he had left in his right eye. That medication made him sick constantly and it was hard for us to even make it through a date. Don’t get me wrong, my mom wasn’t talking me out of dating Chris. She just wanted to make sure her daughter was going to be ok (after all, she was the one pushing us together in the first place). What she found out, and what I was already discovering, was that Chris was becoming my best friend, my partner in all the important decisions in my life, my confidant, my world. Three years from that Labor Day weekend we were saying “I do” at the Alumni Chapel at MSU.

I never really saw Chris as a guy with a disability. We definitely had a different relationship than the rest of our friends, spending more time together than most of the other couples we knew – and still do. I knew I couldn’t be his eyes for him at all times and never wanted to be overbearing or an enabler. And I knew that’s not what he wanted either. As you know from Chris’ first blog, he has never been a slacker. Chris is a smart, intelligent, down-to-earth guy that got a horrible break at the age of twenty-two. I often think if the tables were turned, could I live life the way he does? I’m afraid I know that answer is no. In fact, I think he lives life fuller than most with 20/20 vision. Chris may need help matching his socks and (when he was wearing suits and ties daily - his clothes), but he’s the one that tells me how to frame a project we are working on, or things as simple as “you’re going the wrong way” when I’m driving to a restaurant I’ve been going to all my life – I am very directionally challenged. Still, sometimes I get fed up with being the only driver in our house when we have 16 different places to be in an evening, or he has a pile of paperwork to go through that he cannot read or the times he embarrasses me by walking up to the wrong woman in a store and starts to follow her out. Like I stated before, there is never a dull moment.

As is true with any two human beings who share a life together, disability or not. We are always learning about each other. The important thing is to keep working at it. Certainly, we have some extra challenges in the mix, but it all started with a commitment. Once that was in place there was much less of a mind set or temptation to bail out, something that is true with any relationship. In fact, most days I forget Chris can’t see. And then sometimes it's so in my face (in all our faces) that it’s impossible to avoid it. Like when he was experiencing problems with his old work computer and would get completely frustrated (and so would I, since I am not exactly a techie), or when he runs into a door and hurts himself or even when I forget to tell him there is a curb and he walks off it. But the fact that he has to deal with it ALL the time is the part that amazes me, how he has to constantly be thinking about everyday things on top of maneuvering the city streets or a new restaurant or getting transportation to a work meeting. I know, because I share a life with him, he works harder and smarter than most people ever do.

Not really the story I was planning to tell when I started. You were warned at the beginning that I am not a writer. I’ll leave that part to the blind guy, he’s done a pretty good job with it so far.

Happy Birthday honey! I love you!