Two selections from the June 2010 issue of O Magazine:
Regaining Your Eyesight after 33 Years of Blindness
"Simple everyday things bring me to tears. Watching butter being spread is fascinating. Cutting my meat without struggling gives me so much joy. I look at my husband and say, 'I did that myself.' I'm surrounded by so much beauty and color: my husband's blue eyes, the red pieces on the Candy Land game that my grandson and I play, the way the light hits the colored glass windows at church, the stark branches against the blue winter sky. I've been watching movies of my children when they were in high school, playing volleyball, acting in plays. Imagining them doing those things wasn't the same. I was 23 when I lost my sight, and my children were 2 and 5. When I see my young grandchildren, it's as if I'm looking at my children again when they were little -- picturing how the wind blew my daughter's hair across the side of her face. I can't wait to witness my granddaughter's first steps. And I love watching my grandson dance. When he used to visit and wanted to play outside, he always knew that Grandma stayed on the deck. But I recently told him, 'Grandma isn't going to stay on the deck anymore.'"
- Jenny Peterson, who received a prosthetic implant in January 2010 to restore the sight that she lost in 1976 after a reaction to antibiotics
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Seeing the World From the Top of a 16-Story Tree
"It's like climbing to outer space. There are millions of undiscovered creatures in every nook and cranny. Some are two feet long, some smaller than a raindrop. At 165 feet up, I'm the first to see rain on the horizon. There are 1,000 shades of green, and I usually can't see the forest floor. Sometimes I stay overnight, and it's too much fun to sleep. The tree's strong architecture is very protecting. The swaying lulls me like I'm a baby. At night the insects chew and chirp - it's a symphony by Mother Nature, Times Square in the forest."
- Tropical rainforest canopy biologist and conservationist Margaret D. Lowman, PhD, who began taking her two children up with her into the treetops when they were 4 and 6 years old