St. Louis Family Vacation

We were certainly thrilled to be able to have an “almost” normal holiday this year. Still being cautious during this Covid-19 pandemic, we found ourselves carefully gathering with a few extended family members in the City of St. Louis, my hometown.

Traveling

Being with family is the best holiday present I can imagine and I strive to do this every year, as safety allows. Booking an Airbnb for a few days with our children and their families sounded like the perfect solution in these strange times.

A big move and a stomach bug limited some members of the clan from joining us. The hustle and bustle of more than just us 2 in one house take me back to the times when our family of 6 lived all under one roof. Loud, rambunctious, contemplative of the old days and of the new times of now, our temporary home was almost as full as the old.

A tourist in my hometown

Visiting my hometown is always fun. Playing tourist and rediscovering the sites of my growing-up days certainly takes me back. There was the amazing Gateway Arch to revisit, still marveling at its amazing architecture and reaffirming my firm resolution, my feet do not need to ascend all of its 630 feet, thank you very much. My time was better spent browsing its amazing museum down below, meeting the hopefully smiling masked faces of its employees with a mask concealed smile of my own.

We also visited the St. Louis Art Museum, located in Forest Park not far from where we stayed. Having a certain passion for art, visiting these exhibits was exhilarating. Counting myself among the half a million people that visit this museum every year, to say it was amazing is an understatement. As I roamed from room to room, I did have a bit of a struggle.

Sightseeing with AMD

Sometimes I feel I may sound like a broken record, but again, it's the lighting and the placement of the information plaques for the exhibits. The ambiance is important, I am sure, to enhance the displays in these settings, but sometimes it can be too much, or too little in this case. I found myself staying behind as crowds would stand and observe and read what each exhibit was about.

Waiting til the area was clear, I would step up, standing real close, adjust my glasses so that I too could read what needed to be read. Being 4’11 of course didn’t help. I ended up needing to almost stand on my tip toes and glance down through my lifted bifocals, trying to read about these works of art.

Solutions

Macular degeneration raises its complications in many directions in my day to day life. So in stepping up and lifting up I am persevering and seeing all that I want to see. Even with struggling to see things clearly, I would not have traded this visit for anything in the world.

Planning ahead, I think there are ways to make these kinds of adventures work for me. It might be as simple as getting a pair of “museum-going-glasses” or computer glasses so that those poorly placed information cards are more easily read. I also need to add in the ever-useful iPhone flashlight, at the ready, to enhance my own personal lighting.

A new year

Our holiday was special with family and adventures back in my hometown. I am hoping this New Year brings more positive news and directions for us all in our macular degeneration journeys.