How Seeing The World through a Blind Woman’s Eyes made me a Better Writer

I attended university in San Diego, California. As a mid-level Spanish speaker, I enjoyed taking weekend trips into Mexico. Like many college students, I worked at a number of part-time jobs. One of the most interesting ones was as a personal assistant for a professor who was blind. One Monday, after I’d related my weekend in Ensenada, a port city in Baja California, to Dr. Spenser, the adventuresome, fearless, and fiercely independent educator, revealed she’d never been to Mexico and asked if I would take her. Taking a blind, middle-aged woman into Mexico? Holy guacamole. What was I getting myself into?

Dr. Spenser might have been blind, but she didn’t miss much. When I didn’t answer right away, she picked up on my hesitation and convinced me that it would be an experience neither of us would ever forget. I picked her up early the following Saturday morning. We crossed the border at San Ysidro and stopped in Tijuana. I was struck by the detail of her questions as to the look and feel of the border city. Were the people dressed in traditional attire or modern clothing? She fingered the buildings as I described them and asked if they were concrete or adobe. Was the noisy city crowded? I described the rhythm of the movement all around us in a way I’d never considered before. 

We went into several souvenir stores on Avenida Revolucion. I traced her fingers across the embroideries on peasant blouses as I described them.  She held a white ground long-sleeved top with a floral embroidered design in primary colors to her chest and asked if the blouse had any red in the pattern as red was her favorite color. I asked her how did she understand the concept of color if she couldn’t see. She explained she wasn’t born blind, that she’d lost her sight at eighteen after being thrown from a horse, and remembered what colors look like. I described every color in the embroidery pattern in a level of detail I would not have normally done: The red was a delicious candy apple, the yellow was a yummy lemony, the green the same shade as a freshly-mown lawn.

When she had “seen” everything she wanted to see in Tijuana, we continued south on highway one. The drive from Tijuana to Ensenada is about seventy-three miles and takes an hour and a half to complete. We stopped in Rosarito at the famous Halfway House restaurant for lunch. After a feast of bean and cheese burritos, we took a tour of the restaurant. I described the hacienda style of the old building’s architecture and the Spanish tiled roof and ceramic floor. Dr. Spenser got down on her hands and knees and felt the unevenness of the size of the tiles etched with a floral pattern and said they were just like the ones in her mother’s kitchen. 

We left the Halfway House and continued on to Ensenada. I described the winding, hairpin turn toll road that hugged the rugged mountains while perched next to the cerulean-blue Pacific. We drove through central Ensenada, checked into our seaside hotel, and headed for the beach. On the way back to the hotel, we encountered a kid selling shells out of a cardboard box. I rubbed Dr. Spenser’s fingers over the shells as I described the color, shape, and depth of a pinkish conch the kid held next to the Doc’s ear. 

That evening we sat at the long wooden bar of Hussong’s Cantina and knocked back shots of their own handmade tequila while I gave the Doc a history of the literary hangout that was founded in 1892 and rumored to be the birthplace of the margarita. 

The next morning we drove to the Punta Banda Peninsula to see La Bufadora(blowhole), the second largest marine geyser in the world. We stood at the edge of El Mirador(the lookout) over the Pacific. As I described the strength, height, and frequency of the geyser, Dr. Spenser squealed with delight like a young girl as we were drenched with ice cold spray when the blowhole blew.

On the way home, we stopped in Porto Nuevo, a unique little fishing village consisting of four streets with nothing but restaurants featuring local Mexican lobster caught just a few steps away.  I took the Doc on a tour of Ortega’s, the sixty-year- old family-owned restaurant we had just eaten at. I described how the Mexican design style was used to accent the culture of the area-from hand woven baskets, rural wood ceilings, candles, and pottery, to wood-carved doors and the stained glass in the lounge that she’d studied with her fingertips. Afterwards, we walked off our meal along the waterfront with vendors selling shells and jewelry. I described the color, intensity, and shape of a particular turquoise necklace that was a brilliant sunburst pendant trimmed in silver she tried on and ultimately bought. 

Later that night I recalled Doctor Spenser’s promise that this would be a weekend I would never forget. She was right. Those two days forever changed me in ways I could never have foreseen. Through the eyes of a blind woman, I saw the world in exquisite detail for the very first time.  Doctor Spenser taught me that to be a successful writer, it’s more important to imagine than it is to see. 

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Susie Black biography

Named Best US Author of the Year by N. N. Lights Book Heaven, award-winning cozy mystery author Susie Black was born in the Big Apple but now calls sunny Southern California home. Like the protagonist in her Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, Susie is a successful apparel sales executive. Susie began telling stories as soon as she learned to talk. Now she’s telling all the stories from her garment industry experiences in humorous mysteries. 

She reads, writes, and speaks Spanish, albeit with an accent that sounds like Mildred from Michigan went on a Mexican vacation and is trying to fit in with the locals. Since life without pizza and ice cream as her core food groups wouldn’t be worth living, she’s a dedicated walker to keep her girlish figure. A voracious reader, she’s also an avid stamp collector. Susie lives with a highly intelligent man and has one incredibly brainy but smart-aleck adult son who inexplicably blames his sarcasm on an inherited genetic defect. 

Looking for more? Contact Susie at:

Website: www.authorsusieblack.com

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Death by Cutting Table

Butch Oldham didn’t have an honest bone in his body. So, the question wasn’t who wanted him dead. The question was, who didn’t. Mermaid Swimwear sales exec Holly Schlivnik finds colleague Queenie Levine standing over Mermaid CEO Butch Oldham’s bloody corpse nailed to a fabric cutting table with a big honkin’ pair of cutting shears plunged deep into his chest.

When the cops discover Queenie’s blood-soaked sweater, learn about her stormy relationship with the victim, and her public threats to make Butch pay for destroying Mermaid Swimwear by stealing it blind, Holly’s colleague shoots to the top of the suspect list. When Queenie is arrested, the wise-cracking, irreverent amateur sleuth jumps into action to flesh out the real killer. But the trail has more twists and turns than a slinky, and nothing turns out the way Holly thinks it will as she tangles with a clever killer hellbent for revenge. 

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Category: On Writing