My first days home are spent learning about my damaged vision, what I can see and not see. I find it difficult to read. Words fall off the left margin and when I try to read the newspaper, the columns bleed into each other. I realize that the loss in my left peripheral vision may affect what has always been my unique way of seeing – I am near-sighted in one eye, far-sighted in the other, which is why I have lived so long without glasses. Now, however, the left peripheral loss seems to affect reading, which has been the task of my left eye. I try to remember what the occupational therapist told me in the hospital about marking the left margin with red and blue dots. I try using my hand as a straight edge instead, but quickly give this up. Finally, I decide to just read and see if the brain will eventually find the words for me (for years my brain has seamlessly shifted between right eye and left eye for far and near vision). So every morning I attempt to read the newspaper without aids or gimmicks, and in a few days, the reading gets easier, although I still lose words off to the left.

The physical therapist in the hospital warned me about walking about, that I needed to be extremely careful. I don’t have to be warned. The first day I move from handhold to handhold – couch, wall, chair, stair rail. I am quite nervous and run into things, bruising my shoulder, my side. Then comes an “aha” moment. If I turn my head slightly left, about 10 degrees, I can see the way ahead clearly. After a few days, this becomes natural, and I no longer think about it. Although I’m still physically weak, I begin daily jaunts around the house, counting my steps, and soon am less tired, more agile and sure-footed.

The computer is a greater challenge. I find it difficult to read the screen or find what I’m looking for. The red buttons on the left to close a file don’t seem to exist. I try writing an e-mail and have to raise the type 50% which seems to take much of it off the screen where I lose it. One day I put together a group e-mail to let friends and family know how I’m doing, and it takes hours, particularly since I have to do it on Tom’s computer because I fried my keyboard knocking over a glass of water – on my left, of course. I have moments of great frustration and tears, but I keep at it and each day it gets easier. Tom loans me his drug-store reading glasses and that helps.

In my worst moments, I tell myself to be calm, to remember how lucky I am. I do know that. The one time I give in to depression comes on a morning soon after I’m home, when I think how the neurologist in the hospital said it would take six months to a year to fully recover. I have promised myself to do whatever it takes to come back, as close to one hundred percent as I can, yet I also know that those same six months to a year are the most critical months to promote my novel. How can I possibly do both?

Fortunately, I don’t stay depressed long. Too many people are supporting me, extending genuine concern. The overwhelming sense of love and care I felt in the hospital continues after I’m home. Friends from Charlotte and Chapel Hill visit me in Greensboro. A family from Ghana comes by to ask about my well-being, a Ghanian tradition when someone is ill. The family elder prays for my healing in a voice as resonant surely as God’s and I’m deeply moved. Others call, e-mail and send flowers and cards. Our church organizes volunteers to do food, and they bring us a wonderful meal each evening for a week (and offer more). After the less than exciting hospital food, dinner becomes a glorious feast. (I discover, in fact, how much little things mean, like hot coffee and the buttered toast at the diner where Tom and I eat breakfast on his days off.)

The food and my ability to sleep soundly begin to restore my strength, although a night comes when I do not sleep, cannot sleep. Our son-in-law, Guy, calls in the afternoon from Kentucky to tell us Carol’s water has broken and she is in labor. They will wait until the contractions are stronger before going to the hospital. They will keep us posted. But we hear nothing further. We call later in the afternoon. No one answers their cell phones. We leave messages. It isn’t until almost midnight that Guy calls back. Everything is fine. Carol is almost completely dilated. It should not be much longer. Hours pass and again we hear nothing. I can’t sleep. What could be wrong? Why don’t we hear? Carol has worked so hard to convince her doctors to allow her as natural a birth as possible. She does not want drugs. She does not want an epidural or a C-section.

Still we don’t hear. I try to go bed but toss about. My fears grow. Are things falling apart in our family? Has everything gone too well for us for too long? I tell myself this is illogical, superstitious.Five-thirty in the morning the phone rings. Finally. Benjamin Albert has been born, at almost 9 pounds. Everyone is okay although after 20 hours of labor, the doctors were forced to do a C-section.

I am relieved, joyous, excited. I remind myself again how much I have to be thankful for. I have survived a threatening illness. Our first grandchild has entered the world safely. Our daughter is recovering well. I need now to move ahead with my life, embrace it fully with so much to be alive for. I’m not naïve; I know now that life is fragile, that mortality waits in our path no matter how often we dodge it. Our lives can change quickly – in the blink of an eye, as the cliché has it. Knowing that, I want to seize what I can of the life I have. One moment especially is the evening I have anticipated for a year – the October 16th launch of my novel in Charlotte. It will be the first time since my stroke to stand in front of an audience and read from my novel. I have told my publisher, Novello Press, that I intend to be there and I want to read and speak. I have not told them that I’m terrified.