Every once in a while my part-time job at Easter Seals Headquarters asks me to do something out of my comfort zone. Writing a letter to my teenage self was one of those things.

That’s me in the hospital in high school. (Photo courtesy Laura Gale.)

I’ll try to explain. Earlier this month Easter Seals helped expand Thrive, a mentorship program for young women who have disabilities. Thrive’s Letters to Thrive blog encourages women with disabilities to write letters to their younger selves. The hope is that young women might read the letters and benefit from the lessons other women learned growing up with a disability.

I didn’t grow up with a disability (I lost my sight when I was 26) but my supervisor at Easter Seals still thought it’d be a great idea for me to write a letter to my teenage self. “They can post it on the Letters to Thrive blog, and we can publish it on the Easter Seals blog, too.”

I supposed I could write about the disease that caused me to lose my sight, but I don’t like thinking — or writing — about going through high school with Type 1 diabetes. I already had to write about that for Long Time, No See, and I much prefer thinking about the goofy and fun times I had as a teenager. You know, rather than the hospital visits. I respect my supervisor at Easter Seals, though, and I like working with her. I agreed to write the letter.

The Letters to Thrive site was easy to access with my talking computer, and it even has a What Should I Write About? link for those with writer’s block.

I’d love to tell you that composing this letter was enlightening or, ahem, eye-opening. Truth is, it left me feeling bittersweet — sad for my younger self, while simultaneously hopeful for the future. My letter was published on the Letters to Thrive blog last week, and I’ll paste it below. But first I must give credit where credit is due. Mike Knezovich provided the Nostradamus reference — I would have never come up with that on my own!

20 November 2014

Dear Younger Self,

The blip on your popularity chart peaked off the screen last week when you returned to high school — other kids think it’s cool to know someone who was in the hospital and was almost in a coma.

Right now the two shots you take each day are long-acting insulins, far too slow and weak to handle the carbohydrates in the popcorn you like to snack on, the ten-cent rice dish you buy to save money in the high school cafeteria at lunch and the ice cream you cheat with from time to time.

This was your third hospital visit during your high school years, and before you were released this time, your doctor declared you won’t live to see your 30th birthday. What you and your doctor don’t know right now is that before you turn 30, people with Type 1 diabetes will be able to test their blood glucose levels at home throughout the day. They’ll use an insulin pump or take a shot of fast-acting insulin to counteract the sugar and carbohydrates in all sorts of foods. You’ll be able to be more spontaneous, you won’t have to plan every meal, and you won’t have to feel guilty when you snack.

What your doctor could have told you as you left the hospital this time was to keep taking care of yourself the best you can — that way you’ll live to enjoy these breakthroughs. Your doctor isn’t a bad man, and in the end, the impact his Nostradamus prediction made on you won’t necessarily be the one he intended. In fact, it’s already sparked a sense of urgency in you: you want to squeeze in a full life before you turn thirty. You’re on a streak where you’re saying yes to almost any opportunity for adventure that comes your way, and now, speaking to you 40 years later, I say…go, girl!

One of the major (if only) advantages of having a chronic disease or disability when you are young is that it can give you the wisdom to understand life could be cut short at any time. Keep working at staying healthy — that way you’ll steer clear of the hospital and have more time for adventures.

Keep taking advantage of the opportunities that come your way. Open yourself up to all sorts of people. See what you can see. Experience what you can.

Choosing a full life now will expose you to many people of many cultures making many different choices. You’ll witness people going through transitions and see how the decisions they make during those times affect their well-being later.

Younger self, I can tell you now that you are going to live past thirty. I can also tell you that you are going to face a lot of life-altering changes along the way, and the people you meet the next ten years or so will be the role models who will inspire you when you go through these changes later on.

Get out there and meet them. Listen to them. Learn from them.

And above all, keep having fun!

Love from your future self

Most of the time I walk the mile-and-a-quarter to and from work. But when the weather here in Chicago turns extreme, or I’m running late, I take the Red Line subway.

The Red Line runs from the South Side, through Chinatown, to the North Side, so the cars are full of human diversity. White people, black people, men, women, old, young, Asian people, Sox fans, Cub fans (it stops at U.S. Cellular and Wrigley Field.)

At rush hour, train cars are standing-room-only. Which makes for the elevator dynamic. People looking at their shoes, their phones, but mostly not at each other.
Which gives snoopy observers like me a great chance to study people. And their faces.

For a snoopy observer white guy like me, it’s been a revelation to study black people’s faces. Because, you know, they are remarkably different from one another. Like, you know, white people’s. And I wonder about where they came from. Not as in Alabama or Mississippi, but as in, where in Africa? In the world? I’ve got a lifetime of accumulated data about caucasian facial traits, but not for black people.

I am not ashamed to admit that this is a revelation, because my ignorance has been born of lack of exposure. It’s not a whole lot different than the kinds of revelations I had visiting Europe for the first time and understanding that hey, yes, their refrigerators are smaller but these people live a pretty damn good life and Americans aren’t the only people who live well. Live and learn.

Anyway, growing up, I mostly only saw black people on TV, and largely, they were a sort of an abstraction. There was not a single black person in any of the schools I attended, and I don’t think there was a single black person living in my town, though I could be wrong about that. My town was full of white-flighters who’d left the city expressly to not be around black people. (I’ve learned since then that both white and black people were victims of scurrilous blockbusting and redlining practices, but that’s another story). So, while I got to see lots of faces of Czech, Polish, Italian, Irish, Dutch, Croat, Serb, and other heritages — and the vivid differences between them — I saw no black ones. And it led to the sense that one black face was all black faces.

When my family would drive into the city we’d pass the enormous housing projects alongside the Dan Ryan expressway and to me, they were scary places inhabited by scary people. And I kinda figured that all the people in those places were scary, and they were all the same.

Happily I know better than that now, partly from simply living long enough to remain clueless. But it doesn’t just happen. Some of it takes pushing out of one’s comfort zone, and simply paying attention. Some of it comes from leaders – political, cultural, and artistic – pushing me. I still remember walking out of Do the Right Thing a smarter person than when I entered. The notion that that there were hierarchies, good people, bad people, and shades of gray in what I thought was a monolithic “black” world was exhilarating, liberating, and embarrassing at the same time.

It works both ways, of course. A recent NPR story on the limitations of the accuracy of eyewitness accounts, and of lineup identifications in criminal cases, noted that all cross-racial IDs were substantially less accurate.

I’ve been thinking about all this partly because a couple weeks ago Beth and I took in our annual movie at a real movie theater. It was Dear White People. I thought it was well-made, extremely well acted. But it was not revelatory, for me, in the same way that Do the Right Thing was. And I realized that it was less about the movies and more because I’ve learned a lot over the past few decades.

Having grown during the 1960s, I never thought of myself as a racist. Because conceptually, I wasn’t. There was a clear right side to be on in theory at least. But experiences – from meeting and befriending people who don’t fit my preconceptions to simply going to movies like Do the Right Thing have taught me that beyond cross-burning hate, there are less overt but harmful biases we all carry. I’ve lived with particular flavors of that dynamic since Beth lost her sight and Gus was born with severe developmental disabilities. People make assumptions without knowing a thing about me or us. It’s not always been happy, but seeing those things has been good for me.

So I feel good that on one hand, I’ve come a long way, and that we’ve come a long way. On the other, I’ve never been so certain that for all the progress we’ve made, there’s a long, long way to go. And I’m not, and we’re not, going to get there by accident.

Last Thursday I spoke to a U of I class in Champaign. Monday morning I spoke with second graders at Chicago’s Francis Xavier Warde School. Yesterday I spoke to visually-impaired adults at Blind Service Association.

Each of these three presentations ended with a Q&A, which lead’s me to today’s quiz. Tell me if the following questions came from a college kid, a second-grader, or an adult with a visual impairment :

1. How do you know what you’re wearing?
2. How does it feel to be blind?
3. What is the name of your book?
4. What’s your favorite thing to do with your dog?
5. What is it like to be blind?
6. When you’re up there in front of us, do you picture what we look like?
7. Do you know my girlfriend?
8. So is there one thing that’s happened since you’ve been blind that you just can’t picture, you know, like instagram, or, like something like that?
9. Is it sad to be blind?

That’s the quiz, now for the answers – let’s see how you did.

At Frances Xavier Warde last week.

1. A college girl asked this. I was wearing black shoes, black jeans, a gold sweater and a colorful scarf. The shoestrings on my black shoes feel different than the shoestrings on my gym shoes. I put a safety pin on the tag of my clothes that are black, and the gold sweater is the only one I own that has a cowl neck (so I just memorize that the one with the cowl neck is gold). My multi-colored scarf is the only one I own that has textured stripes I can feel, and the woman who sold it to me said it’d go with anything. “Does it?” I asked the class. They chorused a yes.
2. A second-grader asked this one. I’ve been blind half my life now, I told her. “I know it’s hard to believe, but it usually just seems normal.”
3. A visually-impaired adult asked this. My talk was about memoir writing, so gee, you’d think I might have mentioned the name of my book, huh! I’d forgotten, though, and when I told him my memoir is called Long Time, No See, he said he knew my story sounded familiar. “I read the audio version!”
4.  The college talk I gave was to an animal sciences class, so you’d think this question would have come from a student there. But no, it came from a very cute second-grader. I’d never been asked this before, and I needed to take a few seconds to think before answering. “You probably guess I’ll say playing fetch with a ball, or having her chase a Frisbee,” I said. “But really, my favorite thing to do with Whitney is have her lead me to a place downtown, you know, get there by ourselves.” I explained how good it makes me feel to have confidence in my Seeing Eye dog.
5. Another second-grader asked this question after I’d answered it the first time. She was no dummy: she didn’t buy my first answer! This time I admitted that being blind can be frustrating. “It can take longer to do certain things,” I conceded. “And I always have to remind myself to slow down so I won’t fumble around so much.” They seemed to like that fumble word.
6. A college kid asked this, and I told them the last time I was able to see was 30 years ago. “So I picture you all dressed like college kids in the 80s.” They gasped, and then they laughed.
7. An adult with a visual impairment asked this. “She’s from Champaign,” he said. And know what? I do know her.
8. A guy in the college class asked this one. There are tons of things I can’t picture, but the one that stands out is 911. “The plane going into the building, the smoke, the people jumping,” I said, explaining that I went up in the Sears Tower and the Hancock Building in Chicago when I could still see. I remember how little the cars looked from up there, and how slowly they seemed to be travelling on the highways below. “But I just can’t picture how little the people who were trapped on top of those towers looked, or what it was like to see them jumping off the buildings, all of that.” It felt shameful to be intrigued by such a gruesome event, but I try to be honest when answering questions people ask at the presentations I give. I didn’t want the students to try to describe 911 to me – heck, they were only 6 or 7 years old when it happened. “Lots of people have tried explaining it all to me already, I’ve read books and articles, listened to TV shows and documentaries about that day,” I told them. . “I just can’t get it into my head.”
9. This same question about my feelings came from yet another second-grader. At Francis Xavier Warde School the students spend a lot of their year in second grade learning about special needs, and I think these second graders were worried about me. “You’d think being blind might make me sad, or maybe lonely, but it really isn’t that bad,” I assured them, explaining some of the benefits of being blind. “One of them is that I can’t judge people by what they look like — I get to judge people by what they say, and what they do.” Judging from the concern those little kids showed about my feelings Monday, the second-graders at Francis Xavier Warde School in Chicago are beautiful.

We were carless in Urbana during our visit last week, and relied on the kindness of friends (Thank you Jean, Milton, Nancy and Judy!) — as well as Zipcar and cabs—for transportation. Each ride was a nice chance to chat, and on one trip with Steven (of Steven and Nancy who are Hanni’s companions), he and I – as we are wont to do – started talking about the latest pop culture trends and oddities. One of them: The growing preponderance of young men growing bushy mountain-man beards.

The latest trend.

I’ve had a beard ever since my freshman year in college. I did it in part simply because I could – I was the kid in high school who had to shave the earliest (and consequently was asked to do illicit things that only adults could do, but that’s another story). So when I went off to college (and out of parental range) I figured I’d see what I’d look like. By my lights I looked better. And, given it saved a lot (if not all) shaving chores, it was a winner.

Before we were married, Beth asked me to shave my beard, just so she knew what that looked like. I did. She concurred with my opinion about looking better with than without, and insisted I grow it back immediately. Beth’s last vision of me is when I was 27 years old, when I had more hair on top and less me in the middle. But I honestly can’t much remember what I would’ve been wearing back then or what the styles were.

Ugh.

I do know they’ve changed a lot over time, and I do my best – not always all that well – explaining them to Beth along the way. Beards and long hair went out and men started shaving their heads. And their bodies. During the grunge era, on campus every young man wore a ball camp and a flannel shirt. Young women have gone all Madonna, and if my mom were alive I picture her running

Ugh.

down the street behind women and admonishing, “Your bra strap is showing!” By the same token, there was that intentional layering thing that took hold I know she would’ve wanted to say, “Tuck your shirt in” to every young woman in earshot. For awhile now, tall boots and leggings and tunics have held the day in women’s fashion.

Men wore impossibly pointy long shoes for awhile, some men wear their pants way down low, and now we have impossibly skinny and tight pants for both women and men. And, my least favorite of all modern men’s fashion trends: The tiny suit. Don’t get me started.

Back to the bushy mountain-man beards. Apparently, it’s a real thing. And it’s enough of a thing that a new term has been coined: Lumbersexual (borrowing, of course, from metrosexual.)

Here’s a link to one blog about it. But Google it, you’ll get a lot of hits. There is now a hipster movement that has young men growing out beards and back to flannel shirts and such. But instead of axes, their tools are MacBook Pros, or so one of the bloggers observed.

Which Steven and I described to Beth during our car ride. Explaining it is another matter.

Whitney and I took a train to Champaign Wednesday to give a presentation for an animal sciences class at the University of Illinois. While we were there, we stayed at the house of an old friend: retired Seeing Eye dog Hanni.

There’s Whit with Hanni’s bone during a previous visit to Urbana.

Whitney and Hanni are both Labrador/Golden Retriever crosses, they are both graduates of the Seeing Eye school In Morristown, N.J., and both of them are very, very smart. I had no trouble telling them apart, though. Hanni is a tail wagger — you know it’s her when you hear a thump, thump, thump on the floor. She’s taken on more and more of her Golden Retriever side in these matronly years: she wears her hair long and full. Her coat matches her personality: fluffy.

Whitney, on the other hand, is a lean, mean machine. She’ll be five years old next month, and she no longer shows signs of childish jealousy that she used to on visits with her predecessor.

Fourteen-year-old Hanni is in very good hands with her people Steven and Nancy. She’s slowed down, of course, and when we enter the room, she just lifts her head and acknowledges us with the thump, thump, thump of her tail wagging against the floor. The only person she gets up to greet at the door now is her beloved Nancy. I use Whitney as a role model: I don’t show any signs of childish jealousy. Truth is, I’m joyous.

At 14 years old, Hanni still gets out regularly for walks. Sometimes, she even runs. I eavesdropped on Nancy in the other room as I buckled Whitney’s harness on to get ready for our trip back home to Chicago. “Wanna go to Homer Lake today, Hanni-boo?” she cooed. Whitney guided me out for our ride to the Champaign train station then, and we left to the happy sound of Hanni’s tail thump, thump, thumping her answer to Nancy’s offer.