It was just over 7 years ago that we took Jon to the opthamologist to hear her diagnosis that he was cortically blind–his eyes were fine, but something after the optic nerve, inside the visual cortex of the brain, wasn’t. And that he would likely see nothing beyond shadows for his entire life.

That night that Jon patiently posed for the cutest baby pictures we ever got from him. He seemed to know we needed a pick-me-up.

Meanwhile, visual therapist Mary Crow (or through Parentbooks ) had been waiting for this. She had visited us once, watched Jon, and said he’d have to be diagnosed before she’d be authorized to take us on. I’ll never forget Mary’s second visit declaration “He’s taking peeks.”

It’s a long story between there and where we are now. Like many kids with cortical visual impairment, Jon gained some function around 18 months, and it’s been a struggle to regain what we could from there. Jon’s vision is by no means normal–he percieves things visually in completely differently way from what we do, and always will–but we’re far ahead of what even some experts predicted.

This was with amazing support from a couple of great visual consultants, and a fabulous teacher who believed in Jon and started him on a bridge-reading course last year. It started with heavy repetition. We were all concerned with how well Jon could see the small words on the photocopied sheets, so for each book I made new booklets with the type heavily enlarged.

Last week, Jon hit the last of the series, Book 50.

It was a version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, in simple sentences. The booklet I created for it was 27 pages long; most of the pages had four sentences of type (36 point size). We expected it to take Jon a few days, not for complexity, but for sheer length–you could see him get tired reading it. But he insisted on reading it through each time (and had a tantrum when I tried to introduce the concept of a “bookmark”).

He had it mastered in four days.

He’s moved onto the pre-primer of a new series. We decided to try him without type enlargement. He gets a little close to the page, but he’s able to read without enlarged type. And he’s already almost done the first book of the three-book series before moving on to the primer.

Book 50 feels like a milestone moment.

Flu shot. We all should get one, but as an social event it doesn’t rank up there with the big ones.

In such a mood we headed over to the local mall. The local mall is pretty much at its nadir right now. A Home Depot is moving in very soon, and there are promises of fanciful things in the future– like a public elevator to the second level, which is where the Public Health Flu Shot Clinic had planted itself in the present.

Instead we page security, and a team of monosyllabic young studs escorted us deep into the backstage mall bowels to an unlit freight elevator. From there to a dusty ex-store where they hide the mall’s Xmas decorations, with a few public health nurses herding injectees or filling syringes, and a mass of folks, some lining up to register for shots and some doing the required 15 minutes of post-injection loitering. Did I mention that Jon quite dislikes rooms filled with people? Their acoustic crush tends to overwhelm his ability to see and focus.

But the service was quick (to which my lad only said “Hey–ow!”) and landed Jon with a lollipop, and as we sat on a corner of Santa’s risers, doing our time, we noticed that the up-til-now quiet Jon was having a hoot.

From his perspective, he had just had a ride on a really cool, jerky elevator with manual doors and no light and big clunky sounds, and he knew another ride on it was in the near future. Then the lollipop, which he savoured uncharacteristically (no crunching), letting it take up our entire post-shot wait, its taste overwhelming the less than impressive visual surroundings. As for the crowd: there was barely any noise from the pre-needle agitated and the post-needle bored. He could look around with abandon. And happily chat with his parents. Are you kidding? This was fantastic!

So there you have it: An entirely worthwhile outing. He’d go for a flu shot weekly if he could. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.