Flying home from a successful keynote address in New York City, I felt on top of the world. Internationally renowned neuroscientists at Rockefeller University had listened intently to what I had to say. The flight to Tampa, filled with families excited for Disney and snowbirds heading south, felt like a victory lap. Stepping off the plane in my confident city attire – black boots, tights, and silk tunic – I joined the flow of passengers towards baggage claim.
But as I transitioned from the monorail to the main terminal, the crowd dispersed, and a familiar wave of disorientation washed over me. Tampa International Airport, my home airport, the place I’d navigated dozens of times, became an instant labyrinth.
This airport, with its confusing Red and Blue sides, has always been my nemesis. It’s not a place with two sides, but a chaotic maze of corridors, construction zones, escalators, and disjointed levels. Every trip through feels like a struggle to decipher the next step. Where is the baggage claim? Where is the tram to the terminals?
Dragging my small suitcase, I began to wander, desperately searching for a sign pointing towards the parking garage. Even if I found a parking garage, would it be the right one? Did the Red/Blue divide extend to parking? Was there one garage, or two, or more? My mind was a blank.
My car was parked in the purple section. I knew this because I clutched the small, crumpled parking slip from my departure day. My Honda Element, parked on level 3 of somewhere, zone 6, purple. This slip, usually tucked safely in my wallet with my cash, was now my talisman, my desperate hope for guidance home.
Twenty minutes of aimless searching had completely eroded the confidence I’d carried from New York. Tears welled up. I sank into a chair, trying to regain composure with deep breaths. Here I was, a woman in her early fifties, utterly lost in her own home airport. Again. It was a recurring nightmare, yet it still surprised and angered me. Get a grip, you idiot. Get it together. Everyone else seemed to move with purpose, knowing exactly where they were going. I wiped my face with my scarf, anxious about being seen in this state of distress, especially by someone from the university where I was a professor.
Taking more deep breaths, I finally noticed an information kiosk.
Approaching the attendant, I tried to ask calmly, “How do I get to the parking garage?” But my voice cracked, and tears threatened to spill again.
“Red doors,” the woman stated matter-of-factly.
I scanned in the direction she indicated, seeing only generic airport scenery.
“Right over there,” she repeated. “Can’t miss ’em.”
I strained my eyes, but saw no red. I had arrived on Delta, and Delta was firmly in the Blue zone. Delta is blue.
“Giant. Red. Doors. What airline are you flying? Do you have your parking slip?”
I presented my slip like a badge of honor, proof of my efforts, my right to exist among competent people. Did I want her to praise me for keeping track of it? Perhaps.
She glanced at it. “Yeah, so you’re in purple, you’re Jannus. Red elevators, hon. Right over there.” She pointed again, already turning back to her counter.
I surveyed the terminal once more. Escalators ascended and descended, a chaotic ballet of movement. One set inexplicably skipped my floor entirely. People dragged suitcases, children clutched backpacks and stuffed animals. Sunburned babies wailed. A restaurant behind glass on an upper level beckoned, reached by yet another escalator system.
Tampa airport sections are named after aviators: Lindbergh, Yeager, Earhart, Jannus. I had yet to decipher how these sections related to the Red and Blue zones. I knew the stories of these aviators, could recount their biographies in detail, learned during previous lost wanderings. St. Petersburg, my home, was the birthplace of commercial flight, to… Tampa! Right where I stood. Jannus, whose parking area I sought, had vanished, his body never recovered. A cruelly ironic airport-design flaw, I thought, naming a lost parking area after someone lost forever.
“I’m not seeing elevators.” I tried to keep my voice steady, but frustration leaked through. Was I truly incapable of finding my way? Why was this always so difficult?
The attendant leaned over her kiosk, jabbing a finger into the air. “Straight ahead,” she said, louder now. “You can see them!”
“Am I going up for the elevators? Take the escalator? Or are they on this floor?” I fought to sound less frantic. I’d never navigated this airport solo, but I didn’t want to burden her with my problem. Slowly, I repeated, “I just can’t see where you mean elevators.”
“Oh my god,” she sighed. “They’re on every floor. They’re the elevators!”
Walking in her direction, I noticed blue carpeting underfoot. Was this the mythical Blue side, or just random decor? No red carpet in sight. I passed glass storefronts, searching for… what? Red elevators? Red doors? Red frames? I turned down a corridor, hoping for the parking garage or a directory, but it dead-ended. My fleeting New York confidence evaporated. I was nobody again.
At the corridor’s end, a man swept the floor. He looked up, our eyes met, and he smiled warmly. I smiled back, hesitantly asking, “Excuse me, could you please tell me how to get to the parking garage?”
“Sure,” he replied immediately. “Follow me.”
And just like that, he guided me.
Navigating airport terminals can be overwhelming, especially when spatial cues are unclear.
The Pervasive Nature of Getting Lost: Beyond Airports
Have I always struggled with directions? I suspect so. Unraveling one’s own inner experience is even more complex than navigating a physical space.
I’ve worked in the same building, Cooper Hall, for six years, yet exiting the restroom still throws me off. Entering through a different door makes finding my office a confusing ordeal. Locating the English Department, which seems to shift locations within the building, remains a daily puzzle.
Even familiar grocery store parking lots become disorienting. I lose track of where I parked, struggle to find my way back. Nearby towns like Safety Harbor, Tarpon Springs, Zephyrhills feel like distant, orbiting satellites, constantly shifting their positions. Venturing to new places, even in my own town, is rarely easy. Despite being a Florida native, I avoid exploring new locations.
Leaving my house often triggers a low hum of anxiety. Will I be able to find my way back home?
Childhood Roots of Spatial Confusion: A World of Uncertainty
My childhood home was strange, ruled by a mother plagued by voices and unseen terrors. We lived under constant siege, her fear an ever-present atmosphere. My absent, alcoholic father’s rare appearances were both thrilling and terrifying, his absence equally so, tinged with shame. My childhood trajectory was uneven, chaotic. As a family, we were profoundly lost.
Wayfinding issues likely began in childhood, though opportunities to get lost were limited. Friends were forbidden, school conversations restricted. No television, radio, or telephone were allowed. Bike rides were confined to our street, a simple loop impossible to get lost on. Life was a sunny, confined tank.
My days were filled with drawing, writing, and solitary outdoor play. In fifth grade, I cultivated a thriving vegetable garden. Growing things, cooking, doing laundry, making books – I felt capable, at least within my home and street. Out in the world, we were different, weird, but we were rarely out in the world, so nothing felt truly wrong. Asked about difficulties, I’d point to my mother’s fears, believing a safer house would solve everything. My diagnosis: Mom’s upset. My solution: Make Mom happy. But her happiness lay in solitude. So, solitude became my childhood norm. Beyond biking and gardening, my obsession was maps. I drew countless houses and elaborate, safe villages, creating places my fervent pastime.
Childhood blurs confusion and mystery, the knowable and the unusual. Young minds aren’t expected to grasp spatial relationships or urban layouts. Even in dysfunction, children are usually driven around. My mother drove, but in her own circuitous way, side roads and detours the norm. These routes came with paranoid explanations: we were being followed, watched, tracked. At home, I crawled to stay below window level. In the car, I ducked when “they” got too close. Her rules, however illogical, were my reality. Brush your teeth, memorize license plates, never talk to strangers.
At school, I simply followed other kids: auditorium, cafeteria, classes, gym. Unconsciously, school meant do what other kids do.
I trusted the kids’ understanding of the world more than my mother’s. I knew the mall was the other way from her direction. But maybe not? Or maybe so?
Confusion became my calibration. My internal compass lacked true north, true anything. I never knew where we were or where we were going. This uncertainty permeated every aspect of my life.
But childhood harbors hope. Despair was frequent, yet I expected things to right themselves upon leaving my mother’s house. A grid would materialize, orienting me, freeing me to go anywhere. I’d learn direct paths, find classrooms and parking garages. I’d find my bearings, permanently. Most of all, I longed for friendship, to find and keep a friend.
Navigating Adolescence and Driving: A New Kind of Lost
High school brought a move to my father’s. At sixteen, he insisted on my driver’s license. Driving terrified me, but work demanded it. And he needed a legal chauffeur, his own license threatened by tightening DUI laws.
My first legal drive, I took my father towards his house on Orange Avenue. Uncertain of turns, he became my volatile GPS, yelling directions, correcting wrong turns. My Orlando navigation ignorance irritated him. Everything irritated my father. Navigation felt like his problem, not mine. How could I possibly know where things were? I’d never driven! I didn’t care about the ABC liquor store. Was my navigational ineptitude a subtle rebellion against his drinking? By the time he yelled for a U-turn, directing me into the liquor store’s gravel lot, I felt a strange satisfaction. I didn’t want to go to his places, his routes. My wayfinding failures felt strategic, a quiet rebellion. I must be doing it on purpose, for a reason.
Truthfully, driving was nerve-wracking. Not just directionally lost, but constantly battling the sensation of being on the wrong side of the road. The rearview mirror offered no clarity; I couldn’t discern which side cars were on. Arrows on signs were indecipherable. Translating direction on paper was hard enough in a quiet room, let alone hurtling down Orange Avenue in heavy traffic, my father smoking, drinking, radio blasting, cars surrounding us at 45 mph. Death felt imminent, and likely was.
Back then, I attributed my anxiety to my father’s presence, his drinking, yelling, seatbelt refusal, and my fractured relationship with my mother, abusive boyfriend, the general teenage chaos of failing math, science, and PE, and having no future prospects.
I didn’t understand my confusion. Confusion’s signature move: pervasive brain static, veiling the world.
With my father banging the dashboard, yelling, I simply slowed down, driving through a fog. Objects were visible, but their meaning unclear. Still is.
“Turn here,” he’d bark.
Only one turn possible: Nela, a T-intersection with Orange Avenue. Street on one side, railroad tracks on the other.
I turned, and my father exploded. Grabbing the wheel, drink spilling, hitting my chest. What was I thinking? Turning left on red?
“You said turn!”
“Not on red!”
Silence. I pulled into a Cumberland Farms parking lot, crying. Confidence shattered. I knew right on red was legal, if clear. I thought I was turning right. Right on red – easy to remember.
My father refused to drive, declaring this an “important lesson.” Hysterically weeping, convinced we’d die before reaching home, I resumed driving at 5 mph.
Navigating unfamiliar roads can trigger anxiety and disorientation, especially for those with spatial processing challenges.
Left and Right: A Lifelong Conundrum
Left and right have always been a struggle. Kindergarten pledge of allegiance: thumb check to determine which hand went over my heart. The correct hand was not the one with the knuckle bump.
Today, stove operation still requires thumb consultation: L or R. Doctor requests left arm for blood draw? Thumb peek required.
Horns blaring, cars swerving, I often turned left on red, unable to distinguish “right on red” from “left on red,” or remember which was permissible. Eventually, I stopped turning on any red. Honking ensued, but at least the car was stationary. Head on steering wheel: Better this way, trust me, people.
Given the choice, I’d abandon driving altogether. But after my license, my father’s frequent absences, sometimes weeks or months long, made driving essential.
His house on Gondola Drive, a straight road intersecting Sand Lake Road, another straight road. I’d drive Sand Lake, far in one direction, searching for Gondola after Disney work – nothing. Turn around, drive back towards town, still no Gondola. Maybe wrong side of the street? Gondola was only on one side. Back and forth. She gets lost on a straight line, my father’s refrain.
Sometimes I’d shake the steering wheel in frustration. Sometimes I simply didn’t care if I ever arrived. Singing along to WDIZ, windows down, relishing the freedom of being lost. But longer drives eroded confidence, fueling shakiness and disorientation, solidifying the belief I’d never function in the “normal” world.
Once, I accidentally drove to Cocoa Beach, fifty miles from my father’s. Sensed it was taking long, but direction was a mystery.
Crying, I called my father from a gas station, a frequent occurrence. Daddy, I don’t know where I am. He asked my surroundings. Florida. I’m looking at Florida.
He instructed me to ask for directions. The gas station attendant, cute and rugged, offered directions, but they were incomprehensible. He wrote them down: arrows, lines.
Highway bound, I’ll never forget the attendant in blue coveralls running down the highway center line, waving frantically. Rearview mirror movement – psycho killer? Purse left behind?
Purse present.
Ignoring him, I drove on. Only when I neared the beach again, realizing Orlando was the opposite direction, did his pursuit make sense.
College and the First Hints of Understanding
College, and a bicycle, arrived. Close friends Todd and Sara quickly recognized my navigational struggles and offered solutions. Class escorts became common. They suggested silver and gold bracelets, silver on left, gold on right – instant left/right differentiation! For driving (hypothetically, as I lacked a car), green and purple cushions for left and right dashboard sides.
Their help, though misguided, was deeply touching. I loved their care, but knew their strategies wouldn’t work. My kindergarten thumb trick remained my reliable left/right tool, even for national anthems and football games. In a car, the steering wheel itself defined left and right. More left/right information within the car wouldn’t solve external navigation.
What would help?
No clue.
College expanded my understanding of wayfinding beyond left and right. Todd and Sara’s suggestions revealed their innate spatial language, a language I lacked. I felt like I was missing a sense, like smell or touch. A fundamental aspect of human experience, human knowing, was inaccessible.
Football games highlighted another deficit. Stadium cheers and groans reacted to game events I couldn’t decipher. I couldn’t “read” the field, understand player movements. Did I lack interest? No. I liked sports, even tutored athletes. I craved belonging, wanted to see the game to connect with university loyalty and the collective game-day conversation. Most of all, I yearned to understand the larger game of life, how we fit together, coupled, moved socially, and where we were all going.
To explain my struggles, to myself and others, I briefly adopted “dyslexia.” Todd and Sara scoffed. English major, voracious reader, excellent speller, third unpublished novel underway – hardly dyslexic. But “dyslexia” was the closest label I could find, a place to hang my hat, a way to articulate: My brain isn’t like yours.
Plastic dashboard figurines and red ribbon reminders felt as helpful as suggesting a dictionary to a dyslexic person. Well-meaning friends suggested GPS, but its left/right commands only amplified the confusion.
Dyslexia involves word function. I understood place and navigation concepts. The struggle was functional, performing the task of “reading” a place, understanding my position within it.
Empty highways disoriented me due to insufficient information.
Airports overwhelmed me with too much.
College left me lost on every level, adrift in a sea of faces and places. I felt fundamentally flawed, profoundly separate from humanity.
Who would marry me?
How would I have children? How would I ever find them?
A constant unease of wrong direction, lost on a straight line, my life itself the line.
Diagnosis and Self-Discovery: Face Blindness and Beyond
Thirties brought memoir writing about my mother, her suspected paranoid schizophrenia. Researching her condition, I stumbled upon two words that changed my life: face recognition. A psychology textbook mentioned “face recognition” as a concept related to schizophrenia, explaining difficulties in reading emotions due to impaired facial interpretation. Instantly, I understood face recognition as a distinct human ability. And I realized: I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t distinguish people by face.
Extensive research led to a diagnosis at Harvard/MIT (tests, buildings, researchers blurred): severe prosopagnosia, or face blindness. My memoir, You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know, explored this socially devastating condition. I even appeared on Good Morning America, talking to George Stephanopoulos (unrecognized, of course).
More importantly, face blindness disclosure fostered genuine connections for the first time. Anxiety lessened. Summers in New York became a refuge: no driving, city grid navigable, everyone a stranger. Forties brought clarity, happiness, a sense of orientation.
Each spring, my agent insisted I meet fellow author Jane Bernstein. Shared agent, cyclists, memoirists, professors, summer New York subletters – destined to connect. Year after year, I resisted. No need for more friends, and Carnegie Mellon professor sounded intimidatingly stuffy. Agents, however, persist. One May, I relented.
Rehearsed route the night before emailing Jane: Bethesda Fountain, 5 PM. Grumpy dread filled the day.
Jane, Pittsburgh-based but New York native, agent assured me, I’d love her. Doubtful. Regardless, punctuality was key. Left my sublet twenty minutes early, Central Park bound. Fountain chat, done by 6 PM – no dinner extension.
Alone at the fountain, waiting. Relief washed over me when she didn’t appear. Stand-up? She’d call tomorrow, apologize, end of story. Evening plans forming when my phone rang.
Jane, profusely apologetic. She was at the fountain. But I wasn’t. Looked everywhere. Knowing my face blindness, she was worried, sorry. Then realization: wrong fountain. Cherry Hill Fountain, a terrible mistake. Heading to Bethesda Fountain, directionally challenged, deeply sorry for lateness. On her way, walking, phone dot guiding her.
“Those are so hard,” I commiserated. “Those dots. I can never follow them.”
“Tell me about it!” she exclaimed. “I think I’m walking around in circles.”
“GPS doesn’t help,” I added.
“GPS doesn’t help at all!” she agreed.
“I know,” I said. Offered to find her, but she insisted I wait.
Standing, I scanned for a frantic, searching figure. Suddenly, eagerness replaced dread. I couldn’t wait for her arrival. Felt like I’d known her forever.
Finding each other took time. That evening, we walked for three hours, dinner followed later that week, and weekly meetups all summer. Decade-long friendship ensued. Weekly contact – email, calls, letters, visits, work exchanges. She became one of my closest friends.
Eventually, she confessed her initial reluctance to meet, hating to shorten her workday, facing the obligation of a new friend, or the awkwardness of refusal.
That first Central Park evening, we didn’t get lost. I’d meticulously studied the route, walked it repeatedly. Fairly confident in our park location, though surprised by her navigational cluelessness, a New York native. Leading her down the bridle path felt strange, being directionally superior for once. Had this ever happened before? We talked books, relationships, English departments, childhood, traumas, writing, but not the deeper shared struggle: systemic wayfinding challenges.
My understanding of my directional struggles hadn’t yet reached the level of my face blindness awareness: a genuine learning disability requiring not just attention, but much more.
Three years later, visiting Jane in Pittsburgh, her airport pickup revealed her own navigational struggles. Watching her struggle to find her car mirrored my own experience. We retraced steps, car hunt restarting. I realized: I have this too. It’s real, serious – a learning disability, a deficit in “reading” places. Something I hadn’t truly examined or named. That day in Pittsburgh, watching Jane’s growing frustration, I wondered if I could approach my navigational challenges like face blindness: research, solutions, disclosure, help-seeking. And were face blindness and wayfinding difficulties connected?
Jane circled the parking garage top, berating herself, lamenting her lost car. Her familiar phrase: I wonder if we’re on the wrong side. Self-blame, also familiar. But I felt no judgment, only compassion, wanting to help. Patience and support flowed easily for her, yet were absent for myself in the same situation. Interesting disconnect: diagnosing and comforting a lost friend, yet self-condemnation in identical circumstances. That’s when the question arose: could I treat myself as I treated my dear, lost friend?
In Pittsburgh, Jane fretted about driving students across town, always getting lost in her own city. I urged her to openly acknowledge it, calmly, without shame: I have this deficit, like not speaking French or juggling. Why not ask students for help? Hearing my own therapist-like coaching, her response, the inability to imagine student disclosure, was tinged with familiar shame.
Face blindness disclosure had taken years, fear and embarrassment binding me. It sounded strange, difficult to explain. But a decade later, I embraced sharing it.
Face blindness had defined my life, my identity. Adding wayfinding difficulties felt overwhelming: Oh, and I can’t recognize faces or places! But face blindness provided a foundation, a script to build upon. Jane wasn’t ready to “come out” as place blind.
But I was. Face blindness had taught me about not-knowing, confusion, and help-seeking.
Familiar landmarks like fountains can become disorienting when spatial awareness is compromised.
Mapping My Inner and Outer Worlds: Childhood Cartography to Self-Compassion
After school, I retreated to our Florida room, an unused sunroom workshop. Scotch tape, cigar box of pencils, erasers, rulers, typing paper. Taped pages became vast charts, complex town maps with neighborhoods, parks, business districts, highways leading off-page, a pre-digital SimCity. Little signs at edges: Niceville 2 m., Hospital Ahead!
No people, no cars. Obsessed with road patterns, spatial relationships, wiring my brain for wayfinding. Looking back, I see I was creating a navigable world. In my map world, unlike reality, I was never lost. I was the Maker, the opposite of lost.
Recently, Jane unearthed childhood drawings in her basement, texting a photo: a town map, eerily similar to mine. My towns had orange groves and cattle ranches, hers fire stations, railroads, subways, but the same core map, the same attempt to orient oneself entering the confusing world.
Those solitary hours drafting maps, populating towns with people and relationships, creating cities and meaning, we were grappling with what we couldn’t grasp.
This is writing. Building a world to orient oneself within oneself. Writing as map and journey. Purpose: human connection. I’m here. Don’t know how to find you yet. But I’ll make this map, find my way.
Were our map obsessions born from catastrophic disorientation? Writers in the making? Both? Or just coincidence?
Finding My Way: From Airport Chaos to Self-Kindness
Tampa airport, post-neuroscientist keynote. Asking the sweeping man for parking garage directions. He paused, smiled, “Yes, happy to help.” Kindly, “This is easy. That’s why everyone loves this airport.”
I laughed. Heard that before: Well-laid-out airport.
He walked me across the terminal, down a corridor, carefully explaining the upcoming route. Corridor to parking garage. Gentle, patient, no condescension. Wise helper from a storybook.
Bridge ahead, walkway over car drop-off lanes, leading to the garage. More elevators, turns, two levels. Down garage stairs to go up garage elevators. He explained slowly, using physical markers: double doors, bridge over drop-off, row of carts – you’ll be outside then – never “right” or “left.” Confidence bloomed. Maybe, just maybe, I’d find my way.
Another part knew it was wishful thinking. Too many steps, turns. But I’d keep asking. This man restored faith – in myself, in humanity. Not magical knowing, but reconnection to the human tribe.
Clutching my parking slip, I followed his instructions, and his example. Adopting his patient tone, speaking to myself with kindness, as I had to Jane in Pittsburgh. It’s okay. If these elevators are wrong, we ask again. No problem, dear friend. We’ll find the car. Together. We’ll be okay. Takes as long as it takes, false steps and questions included. We’re car-finding! This is what it looks like for us.
And you know what? New self-talk worked. Found the elevators immediately. Asked for directions to the garage itself, no shame, just pretending to be new to Tampa airport, new to parking garages. Pretending to be my own kind friend.
Half a century to find self-compassion. Here it was.
Purple, Jannus, meandering, but finally, my orange car. Buckled in, I kissed the steering wheel.
Now, find my way home.
Formalizing Self-Accommodations: Paperwork for My Own Needs
Month after the airport incident, office with student Kaley, in a wheelchair, reviewing her disability accommodations paperwork.
University students with disabilities common, often learning or mental health related. First class day: SDS (Students with Disabilities Services) paperwork detailing accommodations. Legal mandate. Check boxes, acknowledge understanding, sign, date. Student returns forms to SDS.
Reading Kaley’s paperwork, I asked about class. Fine, she said, accommodations (extra test time, permission to leave/stand without explanation) unnecessary, but good to have “just in case.” Yes, yes, yes. Good to have what you need on file. Just in case.
I love the bureaucratic language of accommodations forms. Precise, minute-by-minute detail. Intentional, careful communication for learning, helping students. This student does not write by hand. Do you understand? Yes. Check. Yes, I understand.
After Kaley left, realization: I needed these forms. Blank version, fill it out, schedule a meeting with myself. Explain my accommodations.
So I did. Printed the sheets, filled them out.
Heather needs more time to plan routes to new and familiar places.
Heather needs help when lost. May not explain why. Doesn’t need to explain.
Heather may become disoriented, frustrated, sad, cry – normal when lost.
Other accommodations needed?
Checked yes.
Explain below.
Heather needs extra test time. World gives daily tests. Hard to recognize faces, places, scenes as familiar. Gentleness needed to regain understanding for next steps.
Needs narrative directions and visual map. Read and say directions aloud. Extra departure prep time to study route.
This is all normal.
Do you understand?
I do understand.
Will you help her?
Promise to try to treat her as I treat students, beloved friend. Reverence, patience, highest regard.
Confusion isolates. Lifelong otherness. Can’t recognize people, places. Deeply, utterly alone, different.
Formalizing Heather accommodations changed things. More time for route planning, even simple errands. Around the same time, a strange phenomenon: I’m terrible at directions became a common refrain.
Friend Alise dreaded writer’s conference in town, navigation nightmare. Oh, I wanted to say, I can help! It’s real, okay. You need accommodations!
Conference prep: studying, researching, printing, highlighting routes, convention center floor plans, hotel links. No practice run, but planned schedule for 3-hour early departure. Urgent need to tell Alise: Don’t worry! We can wayfind, make this not a problem. Human brains aren’t always navigational experts!
But new converts must be quiet. Held my tongue, just invited Alise to join forces. Focused on the task: 3-day conference, multiple venues, two towns, four parking garages, stairs, elevators, rooms, corridors, levels. Diligent route study: Ashley Street garage to convention center, convention center to restaurant with colleagues/students, etc. Childhood map-drawing resurfaced, goosebumps inducing. Packed trip satchel: water, snacks, maps, umbrella. Even planned the return trip home – leaving a convention center in downtown Tampa can be harder than arriving. Can write backward, not reverse routes.
Smooth sailing. Slow and steady won the race.
Universal Design and the Human Need for Help
Week later, friend Don, 45 minutes late for poetry group, same lateness as last meeting. Standing in my driveway, thrice asking, “Which way is east?” East? Really? Then west? Twice, stunned, mystified. Don, college dean, author, brilliant man. Even with GPS, lost in my neighborhood, frustrated, surprised, directionally baffled.
Showed Don east, west. Felt like prophetess, goddess, and sham, knowing restroom-to-office navigation would be tomorrow’s struggle. But east/west at home, I knew. Living here, plants, light, poetry – morning light in back (east), harsh afternoon light in front (west). Wanted to “have the talk”: topographical agnosia, self-compassion. Wrong time.
School, students complaining about Cooper Hall’s labyrinthine nature. Another friend, my neighborhood’s “labyrinth.” Remembered years learning to exit my isle neighborhood the “back way” via Venetian Isles, feeling wrong, dumb, ashamed for directional incompetence.
Severe spatial relationship/direction disability. But realizing, post-accommodations, wayfinding is hard for many, even “normal” navigators.
Wayfinding: ongoing effort, practice, review. Navigational experts process visual cues automatically. Others rely on stories, feelings, memories, holistic landscapes. Some “just know” campus routes. My abilities limited, but I’ve developed other skills.
Calmness. Question-asking. Paperwork in order.
Post-breakthrough, living with accommodations, I won a teaching award. Not teaching, I thought, but learning. Understanding the learning process, work/self-awareness blend required. Good at printing maps, tracing routes, multisensory learning – narrative directions, visual maps, self-talk, route review, like young Maker in the Florida room.
Teaching award ceremony, asked colleague, psychology professor who teaches face blindness, long-time university faculty, to be my “person.” Needed auditorium navigation, provost/president/chair/colleague identification. Asking him, I thought of universal design: disability as on-ramp. We all need help, ask questions to fill knowledge gaps. Wheelchair ramps assist stroller-pushers, knee/hip issues, roller bags. One person’s problem, a shared human problem, prompting help requests, connection, a gentler, connected world.
Never forget the airport man, guiding me to the parking garage walkway doors, kindly sending me through that portal, changed forever. He helped me find not just my car, but myself.
