An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind

26. My Brothers' Eyes: How My Blind Brothers Taught Me to See by Daniel R. Brooks

In October 2006, I met Dr. Dan Brooks, a colleague of one of my fellow Ph.D. students and best friends Sarah, who had come to New Orleans to make a presentation in our department's seminar series. I don't remember much about his talk (sorry, Dr. Brooks), but I have great memories of going out to dinner with him one evening at Deanie's. Over drinks and scads of seafood, I got a glimpse into the psyche of a giant in biology. I noted mostly that he didn't act strangely around me like some people do. When Sarah told me a few months ago about his new book, I understood why my disability didn't phase him.

This book isn't your typical memoir or biography. There's no precise chronology. It is a collection of reminiscences of a man's childhood and adolescence told through modern images. But it even goes beyond that. It is a collection of photographs taken from interesting perspectives -- perspectives which tell the stories of Dr. Brooks's relationship to his two blind brothers. Through being his brothers' eyes, he learns that the world around us is more than just visual. When he talks about a place, Dr. Brooks uses terms for ALL the senses. For example, while hiking a towpath in Seneca, Maryland, he writes of the smell of decay, the sliminess of the birches, of being able to feel that he is shaded by leaves from above while warmed by sunshine from the side.

One picture captioned "Morning Light, Cacapon State Park, West Virginia" shows early sun rays filtering through an autumn forest canopy. As I looked at it, I noticed that where the sun hit the ground, it transformed those spots into little campfires. Whether it was the quality of light, the color of the leaves being spotlighted, or some combination of the two, I don't know. What I DO know is that as I studied the photo with my eyes, I could feel a fire's warmth, hear its crackling, and smell that pungent smell of burning leaves. Then I read the text above the photo:

The light seems to ignite little fires where it touches rocks or old fallen trees. I'd have taken Lucien and Duncan to the spots where the sunbeams struck so they could feel the warm spots. In some places, they could have felt the sun on their hands or their faces, and turned towards it, using their bodies as compasses.

People hearing about Dr. Brooks and his three other brothers being Lucien and Duncan's eyes growing up might just stop there and think they were great kids for taking care of their poor, crippled brothers. Reading this book, though, changes your perspective because it is about change in perspective. Because Lucien and Duncan wanted detailed descriptions of everything around them, Dr. Brooks tells us that he learned to look at things and situations more carefully than he might have otherwise.

The love Dr. Brooks has for his brothers, and even his guilt at not being present in the most difficult parts of their lives, is evident with every turn of the page. Thus, his life's work has evolved as a sort of homage to them:

In 1977, I named new species of parasites I'd discovered after Lucien and Duncan. This might seem macabre, even disrespectful. But for a taxonomist, finding a new species is a big deal; putting my brothers' names on species that no one could see with the naked eye, made me feel like I was still my brothers' eyes.

The most interesting lines of the book for me came at the very end in the short epilogue. Dr. Brooks clearly and succinctly states about his brothers what I've been trying to tell people about myself for years:

When you know the right thing to do, you have no options. People looking at you might think you have options, but you don't feel it. It's a psychological constraint. It might seem like Lucien and Duncan had no option but to deal with their lives. But that's not true -- they had the option of being miserable and bitter. They just didn't take that path.

Get this book, but take your time with it. The words and pictures are visual, certainly, but if you go slowly, I think you'll find a treat for your other senses, too.