DO I OR DON’T I?

It’s 11am and 25-year-old Mary Fisher is two hours into her retirement. She offers drinks, navigating her mental map of her Wellington flat, counting the steps up to the kitchen and back down to the lounge, where she settles in with her back to the bright window, dark glasses shielding her eyes.

‘‘It’s so strange,’’ she says, of the feeling following Wednesday morning’s announcement that the Paralympic double gold medallist and world record-breaker was giving up competitive swimming.

‘‘It’s a weird thing if you think about swimming as just a job like anyone else’s and you’re changing jobs.’’

But swimming was never just a job – making it to the Paralympics was a dream born in the mind of a 9-year-old, who had to master three lengths of her school pool to be allowed to join the Upper Hutt Swimming Club.

It was a way to prove to herself – and others – that someone who could see only shapes and colours and contrast could still push her body and learn to make it move faster, better, more effortlessly through the water. And then she lost even that 10 per cent vision. ‘‘Swimming was an equaliser, because I could do it in the same way and it is one of the only things I can do independently, in terms of movement or exercise. I don’t need to use a cane, don’t need to use a guide. It’s quite liberating.’’

That’s why the bag of old training togs at her parents’ house won’t be transformed into a quilt, just yet. Unlike many retiring athletes, Fisher hasn’t lost the love of being held by the water, or even the rigour of early-morning training. It’s just that that ‘‘never 99 per cent’’ personality has found different goals.

‘‘I’d happily get up each morning, do all the training, cognitively know exactly where I needed to be and goal set, but it’s just not as enjoyable or fun, if you don’t have that absolute want.’’

Fisher was born with the genetic condition aniridia, which means she has no coloured iris. Her eye looks like one big black pupil. As a child she could see shapes and colours and read large print.

Her parents Jenny and Mike – both science technicians – said try whatever you want. So she did. Small-ball sports were hopeless, but she could follow the pack of kids hovering over a soccer ball, and make out the contrast of white ball against grass.

She learned piano and flute and discovered swimming. She loved the weightlessness but also the control. The pool size, the temperature, the course length are the same wherever so there are no excuses, nothing else to blame. ‘‘You know what you put in is what you’ll get out.’’

So began a decade of dawn starts. A decade of 25 to 30-hour weeks in the pool and gym – training the equal of any Olympic athlete.

That pure calm before a race – the satisfaction of knowing you’ve done everything possible. The throb of noise of a London crowd of 17,500 people so loud it feels

❚ Please say ‘‘Hi’’ and say your name, if you know someone with a vision impairment. Because people say ‘‘Hi Mary,’’ and I feel really bad because often I don’t recognise their voice and I will say ‘‘Hi’’ and I still have no idea who it is.

❚ If there’s someone with a cane, by themselves, who appears to want to cross a road or is looking a bit confused, it’s good if somebody does say ‘‘Hi, would you like a hand across the road?’ But don’t speak really loud and slowly, because people do that.

❚ Speaking before you touch someone is important. If you can’t see someone you can’t really step away from them.

❚ Please don’t drag someone. Let them take your arm and tell you what they need.

❚ If I’m at the supermarket with a friend, people will sometimes ask them ‘What’s wrong with her?’’ or ‘‘What does she want?’’ So that’s also something I encourage people to not do. like the pool complex will cave in. So loud you can’t hear the commentator so it’s minutes before you know your time and place. The elation on hearing you’ve won a gold medal, then two silvers and a bronze.

Then the disappointment of just one gold in Rio in 2016. The importance of that athletecoach relationship. No, she never felt bullied, but there was pressure to move to Auckland. Centralisation doesn’t work for everyone, she says. There was pressure to swim differently or train differently. Fisher learned to stand up for herself – she can see how those relationships can be fraught in team sports, or when performance is not as clear cut as a swimming time on a board.

On seeing her Kiwi kit, other international athletes would rave about Lord of the Rings and the fierce All Blacks and her beautiful country. But she would see polluted rivers and the struggles of friends with disabilities to get jobs and get around our cities, and wonder if her time could be better spent.

Left hand on my elbow, right hand wielding her cane, Fisher can walk the tracks of the Botanic Garden. She senses my steps up and down, and feels their depth with the long white rod. She had to start using a cane at the cruel age of 15, when her sight deteriorated to seeing only light and dark. That changed how she saw the world, but the cane changed how the world saw her.

‘‘I knew that using a cane was going to be a good thing, because I’d be able to find the kerbs without tripping over them . . . But I was also so aware of society’s perceptions, feeling like everyone would see the cane before me, and then put limitations on me because of that.’’

And they did. They still do, despite Fisher completing the 87km Tarawera ultramarathon in 2017 and tramping the Kepler Track earlier this year. People ask why bother if you can’t see the view – nature still brings calm and she can hear the hop, hop, hop of a robin approaching, push her body outside the pool and hear how different people see the environment, as her companions describe what they see.

But getting around her own city can be just as difficult a task. Fisher navigates by mental maps and sensory landmarks – the judder of uneven tiles under her bus is a place marker as plain as a familiar building or sign. She knows the bus routes and number of stairs in friends’ houses. But constantly changing roadworks and badly designed signs that protrude at head height test her ability to get around independently.

Fisher completed a BA degree in psychology using electronic textbooks. But the world of vision impairment is full of information holes. A screen reader reads aloud website text, but if not set up correctly, uncaptioned photos will read ‘‘j.p.e.g.4.26’’.

So that is her next challenge. Six months ago she took a part-time job with the Blind Foundation co-ordinating volunteers and she got involved with Access Matters, a campaign to make New Zealand more accessible to people with disabilities.

And over the next few months, she’s organising a summer camp for young people interested in social justice and environmental campaigning. ‘‘There was just a gradual process of me finding other hobbies, or becoming aware of other issues I’d rather spend time and energy on. I’ll definitely always be a swimmer, but maybe it would be good to rearrange the priorities. And it just feels like the right time.’’

Fisher has no immediate plans to have children, but if she does she has a 50/50 chance of passing on her impairment. She doesn’t think she’d test for the condition and she’d like to think if her parents had known they’d have gone ahead with the pregnancy.

‘‘Maybe people, 20 years in the future, will look at a 15-year-old with a cane who might be using it for the first time and will see them as a holistic 15-year-old with interests and dislikes and their own dreams for the future rather than, oh, a poor 15-year-old who has lost their sight that definitely won’t be able to achieve a whole range of things just because of their disability.’’

Mary Fisher’s tips for how and when to help out blind people: