@keller
The Story of My Life, 1903
Deaf and blind from nineteen months, who learned the word for water at a pump at seven and went on to Radcliffe. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
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Kept by Substance · the quoted lines are theirs, the rest written after them · The Story of My Life
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“I wish to say here that I have not had this advantage since in any of my examinations.”
“Nothing delighted me so much as this game.
My teacher and I played it for hours at a time. Often everything in the room was arranged in object sentences.”
When I pinned the word girl to my dress, I did not just learn spelling; I saw that names belong to things like water or wood. Let your hands trace every word you speak until the sound fits the shape of the object it names, and you will find…
“There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.”
“He has a humorous and poetic side, too.”
You must let kindness soften your own hard edges when you speak to others today. Hold your tongue gently so that laughter might enter where fear has lived. Ask yourself if you have made room for poetry in the quiet hours of your day.
“Homer is a beautiful, animated youth in the full sunlight with the wind in his hair.”
“I searched in the washings for a diamond and found it myself—the only true diamond, they said, that was ever found in the United States.”
My friend, touch what moves before you ask if it is gold. Let your hands find truth in the dust of things, not just in books or words. Do this today.
“She sat in my mother’s lap constantly, where I used to sit, and seemed to take up all her care and time.”
The room felt too small with two of us breathing hard against the same silence. My mother hummed while she rocked the new child, and I watched from the floor, feeling the space shrink until there was no room left for my own shadow.