This past weekend—a very full one—included a trip to Elmhurst College to root on the North Central College women’s basketball team (the Cardinals) against the evil Elmhurst College Blue Jays. OK, Elmhurst College isn’t evil. And really, we were there more specifically to root on Beth’s great niece, who, as a freshman, gets significant playing time on North Central’s team.

Anita follows through on a jump shot during Saturday’s game.

When we entered the gym I was ready with my $12 — $6.00 each for Beth and me, per the information online. The young woman at the ticket table said, “That’ll be $3.00 each.” I left the ticket table  feeling like we’d gotten lucky. Then Beth whispered, as we walked away, “I think she thought we were seniors.” As in senior citizens. Well now.

I guess I could’ve been miffed. But just walking into the court area reminded me that I have indeed been around for a good while. Because every time I go to one of Anita’s games, or a friend’s daughter’s soccer game, I am reminded that for the growing segment of the population that is younger than I am, these women’s games are no big deal. Commonplace.

But I still marvel at them. Because women competing athletically—hustling, clawing, grunting, and even fighting (did you see the USA-Canada women’s hockey game?)—wasn’t the norm,  wasn’t cool, and for most women wasn’t possible—when I was growing up. That’s all different now. That’s a wonderful thing, and it didn’t happen by accident.

Reasonable people can disagree about the role and the size of government—and that should always be at issue in our democracy. But I gotta say this: Title IX changed things for the better. Period.

By Title IX, I mean Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 (there is also a Title IX of the 1964 Civil Rights Act). Birch Bayh, U.S. Senator from Indiana, co-authored and introduced the legislation that is summarized here:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance… 

The law was renamed in 2002. It’s formal name is now the Patsy Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act—Mink was the Congresswoman from Hawaii who co-authored the bill, and who introduced it to the House of Representatives.

The law was not focused on athletics—it was intended to ensure equal opportunity in employment and enrollment and educational opportunities at colleges and universities that received support from the federal government.  Here’s what Senator Bayh had to say about it back then:

“We are all familiar with the stereotype of women as pretty things who go to college to find a husband, go on to graduate school because they want a more interesting husband, and finally marry, have children, and never work again. The desire of many schools not to waste a ‘man’s place’ on a woman stems from such stereotyped notions. But the facts absolutely contradict these myths about the ‘weaker sex’ and it is time to change our operating assumptions.”

Title IX has made a huge difference overall, but its impact has been the most visible in athletics. When I was in high school lo these many decades ago, girls playing sports was broadly considered weird (at best, and characterizations of female athletes were often much less charitable than “weird”).

Not so anymore.  Saturday I sat in the bleachers with Beth, Anita’s family, Beth’s sister Cheryl, their mother Flo, and we cheered some really good players as they went at it hard in a very entertaining game. I heard the coaches get on the players, mothers and fathers yelling at the refs, and it was all…normal. I was pleased that it seemed so commonplace. But I will never cease to marvel at it, and I feel privileged to have witnessed this change in my lifetime.

Our friend Carli Karpeyev left a comment to that post I published here Thursday — you know, the one about the blind-dad TV sitcom. Carli doesn’t have a disability herself, yet she was disappointed that NBC didn’t hire a blind actor for the starring role.

I’ve heard this kind of concern before, why didn’t a wheelchair user play the lead in Born on the Fourth of July, why wasn’t a blind actor cast in Scent of a Woman and so on. It’s never been one of my big causes, though. I mean, gee whiz, isn’t that why they call it acting?

But then I watched a Ted Talk by female stand-up comic Maysoon Zayid that Carli had linked to in the comment she left to my post, and it got me thinking. Maysoon Zayid has cerebral palsy. She studied theater at Arizona State University but gave up her dream to become an actress after repeatedly being passed over for roles.

Even when ASU produced And They Dance Real Slow in Jackson, a play about a girl who has physical disabilities growing up in a small (and small-minded) town, Zayid didn’t get the lead. “This is a part I was literally born to play,” she says, lamenting that they cast an able-bodied theatre student instead. “They didn’t think I could do the stunts, but excuse me, if I can’t do the stunts, neither can the character!”

Zayid says she realized very, very quickly that Hollywood wouldn’t have a place for “fluffy ethnic disabled people” like her. The only female stars she could think of who made it to the top without conventional cover girl looks were comediennes. Whoopi Goldberg. Rosie O’Donnell. Roseanne Barr. So she turned to comedy.

Maysoon Zayid is a comedy success story now, but she still advocates for actors with disabilities, asserting in her Ted Talk that if Hollywood won’t hire actors with disabilities for everyday roles, than they ought to stop casting able-bodied actors into roles as people with disabilities. “If a wheelchair user can’t play Beyoncé, then Beyoncé can’t play a wheelchair user,” she shrugs.

That’s Teal Sherer.

A lot of disability advocates would agree with Maysoon Zayid. After Blair Underwood got the leading role in last year’s Ironside TV series, Sons of Anarchy star Kurt Yaeger (an actor who lost his left leg after a motorcycle accident) said that casting an actor who can walk for that part is “like being in the ’50s and having a white guy do blackface.”
Teal Sherer says Hollywood’s treatment of her and her fellow actors with disabilities is … lame. Her frustration with Hollywood motivated her to produce her own YouTube show called My Gimpy Life to illustrate the often absurd challenges actors with disabilities face in the entertainment industry. In an NPR interview, Sherer said she doesn’t want roles reserved for her because of her disability — but she does want to get a call to read for parts, including ones not specifically intended for actors with disabilities. “If we lose an opportunity to audition, then we lose an opportunity to move forward in our career,” she said.

A lot of food for thought, huh? And in case you were wondering, the dog playing the guide dog in tonight’s Growing Up Fisher debut is not a guide dog in real life, either. “I don’t want to take a guide dog away from a blind guy,” writer DJ Nash, who grew up with a dad who can’t see, said in an interview promoting the new show.“ It was more important to have a dog that could hit its marks and stop at a construction hole on cue, and not be phased by 167 crew members, than to have that verisimilitudinous touch.”

If you’re one of the millions of Americans who’ve been watching hockey, curling and skiing on NBC the past couple of weeks, no doubt you’ve also seen a commercial for a new TV comedy about a father who is blind – a Deadline Hollywood article says 300 promotional spots for the new show will air before the Winter Olympics closing ceremonies this Sunday night.

“Growing up Fisher” has very talented people like Jason Bateman (executive producer) and David Schwimmer (director) behind it, and J.K. Simmons, a fine actor, plays the dad who is blind. It could be good, but if those commercials are any indication, I worry.

That’s Bob Ringwald at the piano.

I’ve run across plenty of people raised by dads who are blind, and they have interesting stories to tell. Let’s start with
Molly Ringwald.. You know, the one in all those John Hughes movies in the 1980s? Her father is blind. My brother Doug is a professional jazz trombonist, and he introduced me to Molly’s father Bob Ringwald, a talented professional jazz pianist, years ago. Molly has written a few novels, and she was asked about her dad during an NPR interview about her books. She told Scott Simon that as a child she enjoyed sitting with him during movies and plays to describe the action. “I actually think that that informed my writing,” she said. “That’s something that I’ve done for so long, that it’s made me, perhaps, observe things in a different way.”

And then there’s Gore Vidal. After the famous writer and critic died in 2012, Bob Edwards Weekend replayed an interview conducted at Vidal’s home in Los Angeles in 2006. Vidal was raised by his grandfather, a U.S. Senator from Oklahoma. Sen. Thomas Gore was blind, and Vidal was ten years old when he started reading to him. “I read grown-up books to him: constitutional law, the Congressional Record, American history, poetry,” Vidal said. ”He was extraordinary, he was my education.” Vidal guided his grandfather to Senate hearings, and he said he didn’t dare fall asleep while sitting in the balcony waiting for the session to be over — at any moment his grandfather might give a hand signal to let young Vidal know to skedaddle down the Senate stairs to guide him to the bathroom.

Growing up with a father who is blind can be interesting, and funny, too, at times. A live performance of This American Life opened with Vancouver writer Ryan Knighton telling a story about a walk in the woods he took alone with his young daughter. Knighton is blind, and when she started screaming about a bear, he panicked. After weighing his options, he realized that her frantic cries of “bear!” were only in reaction to dropping her teddy bear on the sidewalk. Knighton’s most recent book C’mon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark is full of funny — and frightening  — stories of his first years as a father. His daughter Tess is seven years old now, and I’m sure she has some very entertaining stories to tell.

My friend Colleen was the first to call and tell me about the ads during the Olympics promoting the new blind dad TV comedy. My husband Mike confirmed that the commercial shows one scene of the father cutting a tree down with a chainsaw, and then another of him driving a car. I’m sure there are plenty of people who are blind who are looking forward to the premiere, I’m just not one of them.

Don’t get me wrong. I do hope Growing Up Fisher  is good, and that the storytelling and substance outweighs the over-the-top driving and chainsaw gimmicks featured in the trailers, but I’m not going to count on it. When I really want to learn about what it’s like to be raised by fathers who can’t see, I’ll turn to the day-to-day stories of the Ringwalds, the Knightons, and the late Gore Vidal.

Beth’s a voracious reader of fiction…me, not so much. Some of it is lack of patience—I tend toward small non-fiction bites—newspapers, magazines, essays and the like. Novels are an investment of time that I’m rarely willing to make. Which may be why short stories comprise a lot of the small body of fiction I have read.

I am awed by the best short stories—a great short is a concentrated, perfectly executed and polished gem. Beth’s written about one of our favorite writers (and a great friend) Jean Thompson. And I can’t recommend her enough—if you were looking for a short story starting point, try “Who Do You Love.” (BTW, Jean’s a terrific novelist, too.)

In the same stratosphere, in my humble opinion, is Richard Ford, who turned 70 years old yesterday. (I know this thanks to Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac.)

A great collection of short stories.

Ford has won a Pulitzer for “Independence Day“, one of his three novels that follow a character named Frank Bascombe. I’ve liked all three of them, and loved his most recent novel—”Canada“—but am partial to his short stories. If you want a taste, I’d recommend “A Multitude of Sins” as a starting point.

I could go on about Ford, but I’ll save the effort and save you the trouble and just give you a taste. This passage is from “Calling,” one of Ford’s shorts from “A multitude of Sins” about a man’s complicated relationship with his complicated father. Thanks to Beth, who has a knack for finding the most thoughtful and meaningful gifts–it hangs on our living room wall. She bought the framed, signed passage from “Calling” at  the Faulkner House book store in the French Quarter. Ford lived in the Quarter part-time years back, and was friends with the store owners. He signed it after a reading at the store back in 2002.

Bad photo doesn’t do it justice, but this is one of the best gifts ever.

When I get wound up with anger and resentment, as those of you who’ve followed my posts know I am wont to do, I try to remember to read this before reaching a popping point. (I don’t always remember, but I try.) Anyway, here it is:

Like my father, I am a lawyer. And the law is a calling which teaches you that most of life is about adjustments, the seatings and re-seatings we perform to accommodate events outside our control and over which we might not have sought control in the first place. So that when we are tempted, as I was for an instant in the duck blind, or as I was through all those thirty years, to let myself become preoccupied and angry with my father, or when I even see a man who reminds me of him, stepping into some building in a seersucker suit and a bright bow tie, I try to realize again that it is best to just offer myself release and to realize I am feeling anger all alone, and that there is no redress. We want it. Life can be seen to be about almost nothing else sometimes than our wish for redress. As a lawyer who was the son of a lawyer and the grandson of another. I know this. And I also know not to expect it.

My writer’s group met last Tuesday, and when we got to talking about editing I brought up a part from my published memoir, Long Time, No See as an example of the value of good editors.

It’s been a while since I read that book, so after the meeting I dug up the excerpt to read it again. When I read to the last line I thought, gee whiz, this same part could work as a (somewhat unlikely!) Valentine’s Day blog post, too!

But first, the editing part. Before University of Illinois Press published Long Time, No See they had a couple editors go over my manuscript. One checked the medical information, the other copyedited and suggested literary changes, and, surprise, surprise, I discovered I actually enjoy being edited. Those University of Illinois Press editors would ask me to choose the exact word to describe something, and that would force me to put myself back into a situation and really think hard about what it felt like at the time. Not always easy, but very therapeutic.

In my rough draft, I wrote a scene where the retina specialist examines my eyes after all the surgeries and breaks the news to us. The day was July 25, 1985, just three days short of our one-year wedding anniversary. The doctor tells us I’ll never see again, we listen, and then we walk out of the office and head to White Sox Park for a baseball game.

The editors read my version and absolutely insisted that I tell my readers what was going through my head when we found out my blindness was permanent. I didn’t exactly want to describe that time of my life in detail: doing so would force me to put myself back in that room, hearing that bad news again. I did it, though, and writing that scene turned out to be GREAT therapy. I had to think. When I was told I’d never see again, was I disappointed? Angry? Sad? Scared? The answer is here, in that excerpt from Long Time, No See (University of Illinois Press, 2003):

“I’m afraid there’s nothing else we can do,” he said in a tone I recognized from his final report on my left eye.

All I could think to ask was, “Can I lift my head up now?”He said I could. Thankful for at least that, I raised my head for the first time in over a month. I was struck by a sudden feeling of freedom and relief. No more lasers, no more operations, no more weekly visits to Chicago, no more worrying whether or not this all was going to work. We’d been at this for nearly a year; now it was finally over. I swiveled my head as if to look around. I saw nothing.

Mike talked to the doctor, asking sensible questions, I suppose. Turning toward their voices, I asked if this was really it, if we’d really exhausted the possibilities. “I’m a religious man,” the doctor answered, “and in the religion I follow we believe in miracles. I believe God has cured all sorts of ailments. This could happen with you, but there’s nothing else I can do for you medically.”

We stood up to leave. I reached out for the doctor’s hand. He clasped mine with both of his, and I thanked him for all he’d done. He was shaking. I felt sorry for him; I would’ve liked to tell him we were going to be all right.
The White Sox were in town that day. Going to a ballgame after learning I’d be blind for the rest of my life was probably a strange thing to do, but it beat heading home and sitting on our pitiful second-hand couch and wondering where to turn next.

The White Sox were having a rotten year. There were maybe 8,000 people in the stands; Floyd Banister pitched, the Sox lost. But it was strangely pleasant, sitting next to Mike with my head up, not giving a thought to eyes or surgery. We each had a bratwurst and a beer. Between bites and gulps and giving me play by play, Mike bantered with other fans, cursing the underachievers on the team. I laughed at Nancy Faust, the Sox organist—she’s famous for picking songs that play on player’s names. Mike marveled at the endurance of Carlton Fisk, and we both wondered out loud why every time we went to a game, that bum Banister was pitching.

Wedding day, July 28, 1984. We’re headed for our 30th this year.

The three-hour ride home was quiet. Once there, we found ourselves sitting on our miserable couch, as we’d feared, holding hands, trying to imagine how we’d cope. Our only decision that night was to go to sleep. Our bed felt wonderful. I was home for good. Despite everything, a powerful relief came over me, a sense of security, such a change from how I’d felt during those months in my hospital bed. And I realized right away that sight isn’t needed under the covers.