By Sean Dietrich
Sunrise on Lake Martin. I’m usually the first one awake. I rarely have any company in the mornings. I wake up with the chickens. Most mornings, I sit on my porch alone. Just me and the feral cats.
This morning, however, I had company.
I heard small feet walking onto the screened porch, overlooking the lake. I turned to see a child with messy hair, staggering toward me. A 12-year-old girl in pajamas.
She used her hands to feel her way through the maze of patio furniture. She walks like this, feeling her way around, even when it’s daylight.
My goddaughter sat beside me on the sofa. She sort of crawled into my lap, head resting against my chest.
“Morning,” she said with a yawn. Her breath smelled like a billy goat’s lower intestinal tract.
“Good morning, Dragon Breath,” I said.
She cupped her hand to her mouth and attempted to smell her own breath. Birds fell out of the trees.
I picked crust from her eyes. “You’re killing me,” I said.
“What do you see?” she asked.
“Sunrise,” I replied.
“Can you describe what it looks like?” She curled against me snuggly.
I looked at the pink sky of morning. Daylight had taken hold of the world.
“You’ve seen one sunrise you’ve seen them all,” I said.
“Wish I could see it.”
I squeezed her. “I have an idea. How about you tell me what the sunrise sounds like.”
She yawned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I want you to tell me how a blind person experiences a sunrise.”
Becca curled tighter against me. “You really want to know?”
“I do.”
“Well, you have to close your eyes.”
I did.
“No cheating,” she said.
“Scouts’ honor.”
“First,” she said, “I hear birds. But, I feel like when sighted people hear birds, they don’t think about all the DIFFERENT birds they’re actually hearing. They just hear one sound, birds. But if you listen you can hear millions of sounds.”
I listened. We counted 28 different bird calls.
“What else do you hear?” My eyes were still closed.
“I hear screechy things,” she said. “Crickets, maybe. Some high-pitched, some low, some go real fast, some go slow. And I hear the water.”
“I don’t hear any water.”
“You have to listen,” she said in a groggy tone. “It’s a little slapping sound in the distance. Water everywhere.”
She was drifting off.
“And the wind,” she said lazily. “I hear the wind. A lot of people don’t think wind has a sound, but I feel like it does. Even when it’s not blowing hard, wind still makes a hiss in the trees, and if you actually listen, you can tell the wind is always around you, all the time, even when you can’t see it or feel it. The wind is always there.”
“Sort of like the IRS.”
She was breathing heavily, like she was falling into another world.
“Are your eyes still closed?” she said.
“Sí. What else do you hear?”
“I hear your heart beating,” she said in a sleepy voice. “Because my head is on your chest.”
“What does my heart sound like?”
But she was already gone. Lightly snoring. Tucked against me tightly.
Best sunrise I’ve ever heard.
