Every Wise Woman Builds

Ashley Jackson can't see or hear. Yet this girl is one of the most brilliant minds I've ever met.   In this episode, she shares her story of living without hearing or sight. When I first met Ashley, back when Lexie was only 10 months old, I knew a smattering of sign language. Okay, I knew most of the sign alphabet.   As a child, the first "real" biography I'd ever read was about Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller's teacher, and how she finger-spelled the sign alphabet into Helen's hand to teach her...everything. I devoured the story of this half-blind teacher locking the kitchen door when tiny manic Helen clawed her way around the table, snatching people's food, and battled this wild child into folding her napkin.     That story of how one woman opened the world for someone living in darkness shaped who I'd become, as a teacher, mother, writer. Yet I never dreamed I'd actually get to finger-spell into a deaf-blind hand.   Not until that day on a loud, crowded church bus when this tall teenage girl cl