Muammar Al Khadafi

A blind couple teach their two adopted daughters, who are also blind, survival skills. Tasks such as riding the bus, identifying coins and sorting laundry become lessons about confidence and independence.

Love is blind inside the two-story brick house on Mulligan Avenue. And that's why the microwave buttons are marked with Braille. The clocks in the home announce the time. And at 7:15 a.m., everyone is listening for the school bus.

Ten-year-old Rupa is the first to hear it. "Oh, the bus is here!" she calls.

Rupa grabs her white cane. Six-year-old Aihua, guided by touch alone, pulls on a pair of rubber rain boots. Then Paula Sprecher hustles them outside, helping her daughters find their way in a world that neither she nor they can see.

Sprecher, 49, and her husband, Alan, have been legally blind since birth. Although he had some doubts about fatherhood — would they have enough to offer a child? — the couple took a leap of faith in 2008 and adopted Rupa from India. In January, they brought home Aihua from China.

"My husband and I, we grew up without sight," Sprecher says. "This is so normal to us. We knew there were children out there who were probably given up [because they were blind], and we wanted to provide a home for someone like us, for someone we thought we could help."

The Sprechers teach their daughters how to ride the bus (listen carefully for each stop), how to identify coins by size and weight ("This is a dime!" Aihua says correctly), how to sort the laundry (pin your socks together before you put them in the wash).


Lessons about dimes and socks become lessons about confidence and independence.

"They're going to be functioning in the world someday," Sprecher says. "We try to teach the kids a routine and let go a little more and more."

Letting go isn't always easy.

At school, both girls are in regular classes but receive help from a classroom aide and instruction in Braille. Sprecher is a teacher there, so she is never far away.

After school, as she leads the girls toward the bus stop, she asks Rupa, "What street is this?" When they reach a larger intersection, Sprecher reminds the girls to listen for cars. And after they get off the bus a few blocks from home, she tells Rupa to lead the way.

Rupa trots ahead, tapping her white cane. When she misses the right turn toward the house, her mother catches her.

"I didn't know which way to turn!" Rupa cries.

"Don't worry," her mother says. "You will. You're still young."

Sprecher can make out shadows, shapes and colors. The girls can't see even that much — Aihua has no vision; Rupa can detect only some light and color. They will need to rely on white canes and directional cues, such as smells from a bakery, the ring of a wind chime, a crack in the sidewalk.

That shouldn't hold them back, the Sprechers say. Rupa has taken judo, sailing and ceramics. She goes to sleep-away camp every summer and participates in Girl Scouts. Aihua will have the chance to explore whatever hobbies she chooses because, Alan Sprecher says, "if they're physically able to do things, why shouldn't they?"

In many ways, the Sprechers want to give their daughters opportunities they never had as children.

Alan Sprecher was sent away to school when he was 6. He spent weekdays with a foster family and returned home only on weekends, because there were no educational programs for the blind close to the family's home in Baraboo, Wis.

Paula Sprecher's blindness had devastated her mother. "She thought I would live with her until she passed away, and then I would go to a nursing home," Sprecher says.

By Colleen Mastony, Chicago Tribune

May 19, 2011