Right now, on a Sunday morning outside my window on Harrison Street, thousands of hearty runners are streaming east toward the finish line for the annual Shamrock Shuffle. Not sure why it’s called the Shamrock Shuffle two weeks after St. Patrick’s day, but … whatever.

Chris Sale, a.k.a. Mr. Bones, comin’ at ya.

It’s sunny, and the forecast says we’ll get to 58 degrees today. We just about have turned the corner on winter…and Monday we will. Here in Chicago, on March 31, the White Sox will open their season against the Minnesota Twins. And whatever the weather, things will be right again. Baseball will be back. (For the record, the season officially began with a goofy game played in Australia between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Dodgers, and Sunday Night baseball had the Dodgers and Padres—none of which counts for me.)

Chris Sale will be the White Sox starting pitcher, all 6’ 7” and 180 lbs. of him. We’ll have a Cuban import, Jose Abreu, at first base. And a new centerfielder named Adam Eaton we filched from the Diamondbacks in a trade. And Avisail Garcia, a 6’4” 240 lb outfielder who runs like a track star.

I don’t know how it will go, but as always at this time, I’m inclined to think the White Sox will reach the World Series, as they did the only time in my lifetime, in 2005. And win it, for the second time in my lifetime. And if the planets align, they will best the St. Louis Cardinals, forcing Cub fans to root for a real baseball team against their hated enemy.

Others have waxed poetic about baseball. There’s Roger Angell, of course. And the lesser known but totally worthwhile Tom Boswell whose books include “Why Time Begins on Opening Day” and “How Life Imitates the World Series.” I’m just here to say, Hallelujah!

Baseball is better than football. Than basketball. Than that ridiculous European football. About this, no arguments.

OK, well, to me it is.

And, as trite as it sounds, baseball has been a constant part of the fabric of my life. As a patrol boy in grade school, I got to go on school trips to the old Comiskey Park. When I lived in Washington, D.C., I adopted the Orioles but tracked the White Sox best I could via box scores and roundups in the pre-Internet days. Back in 1983, I introduced Beth to my parents at a game at Comiskey Park, and the Sox made the playoffs that year. The day after our wedding in 1984, Beth and I and some dear friends who had traveled from Washington, D.C. for our nuptials went to a game.

In July of 1985, three days before our first wedding anniversary, Beth and I visited her eye doctor for a follow-up visit after a last-gasp surgery to save her eyesight. We learned that she would not see again. Before heading back to Urbana to face our new reality, we drove to Comiskey to have a Polish sausage with onions (“wit” onions is the correct pronunciation), and take in a ball game. Twenty years later, in 2005, Beth and I and her Seeing Eye dog Hanni got seats in the handicapped section for the playoffs against Boston. Later, I sprung for game 1 of the World Series.

And so, here we are, after the longest slog of a winter in my memory. Not much is expected from the White Sox. Detroit’s the prohibitive favorite in the White Sox division—and in the American league. They’ve got 8-1 odds of winning the World Series. The White Sox are 40-1.

Who cares?

Play ball!

Whitney and I are taking a train to Champaign this Wednesday — I’m speaking to an animal sciences class at the University of Illinois, and while we’re there we’ll visit an old friend, too: retired Seeing Eye dog Hanni!

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

Whitney has been guiding me over two years now, and I’ll share some stories with the students to explain how confident and comfortable she seems with her work. After that I’ll go over some of the qualifications necessary to become a guide dog instructor. And this time I think I’ll tell them the story of Jim Kessler, one of the Senior Managers of Instruction & Training at the Seeing Eye. Jim supervised Chris Mattoon, the superstar who trained Whitney and me back in 2012.

Jim Kessler left Wall Street for The Seeing Eye.Seeing Eye.

Jim phoned me before I arrived in November, 2012, he read my paperwork and helped Chris size me up and determined that, of all of the dogs Chris had ready to be matched with a blind person, Whitney would match up best with my living situation here in Chicago.

During the last week of training at the Seeing Eye School in Morristown, NJ, students do “freelance” work with their Seeing Eye dogs –-  instructors expose teams to some of the specific things they’ll be facing once they return home. For my freelance trip with Whitney, Jim Kessler chauffeured us to Warren G. Harding Elementary School in Kenilworth, NJ. His daughter Emma was in third grade there, and his daughter Maeve was a first grader. The school visit taught me a lot about what to do when Whitney couldn’t sit still during a presentation, and the rides back and forth to the school taught me a lot about JimKessler, too.

Turns out Jim hasn’t always worked for the Seeing Eye — he’d worked for Lehman Brothers before it imploded, and then he worked at the Federal Reserve. “And I can tell you the very last day I ever went to work in Manhattan,” he told me. ”It was September 11, 2001.” He’d been contemplating a career change before then, and 911 cemented the decision. An article I found later in the North Jersey Record
Explains:

The position requires a college degree, Kessler said. He worked for an investment bank and was considering a career change when the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, made him switch jobs. Kessler said he chose this position because it combined his interests in teaching, working with dogs and helping people.

After passing a three-year apprenticeship, Jim became an instructor in 2004. He was promoted to Senior Manager of Instruction and Training in 2012 – we were the very first class he supervised. That North Jersey Record article reported that salaries start in the $40,000 range for those in the Seeing Eye’s three-year apprentice training program, and that the salary for full instructors ranges from $50,000 to $85,000. Odds are that Jim Kessler took a significant paycut to work for the Seeing Eye, but he doesn’t talk about that. He talks instead about his pride in the instructors here, his love for the dogs, and his family at home. Jim and his wife have three beautiful daughters, and it was a privilege to be with him and two of those daughters at their school back in 2012. I look forward to telling the undergraduates in that animal sciences class at University of Illinois all about Jim and his inspiring career change during my talk next week — and then playing with Hanni afterwards!

That’s Fritz (or a reasonable facsimile)

If you’ve seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you know the scene: The black knight keeps having body parts lopped off, keeps coming back for more, and is eventually left behind by his opposing knight, shouting “Come back here, I’ll bite your legs off!”

Well, that’s about where our trusted 1998 Volkswagen Passat is. An exhaust pipe fell off, just disappeared last week—and it now sounds like a diesel locomotive. The rear view mirror fell off the windshield, and I superglued it back on — three times. The key fob hasn’t worked for years, and now the locks are haunted — they go up and down on their own. There’s a mysterious water leak behind the driver’s seat. The gas cap door release control stopped functioning a few weeks ago, and I had to pry it open to put gas in.

The license plates expire on March 31. That’s the day I will donate the car to some poor unsuspecting charity, and we will begin a new era: Beth and I are going carless.

I’ve already signed up for Zipcar, a car sharing service, and between that and all the public trans options we have downtown, we should be fine. We’ll probably save some cash in the process. To be honest,  I’ve been thinking about retiring our Passat for ten years, ever since we moved to Chicago. But you know, I’m just irrationally attached to the damn thing.

We bought it when we lived on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, so it carries some nice memories of cruising up and down the beach road with the windows down, the moonroof open, and marine air permeating everything. Our salesman was an African-born man named Fred. I met him when I did an exploratory shopping trip on my own—he said my wife would love the moon roof. Didn’t have the heart to tell him.

The only model they had on the lot was white—not my favorite color—but it would be cheaper (and faster) than ordering one. I came home to tell Beth that I liked the car, and explained about the white thing. We couldn’t decide, so Beth suggested we defer to our magic 8 ball. Will we buy the white Passat? Signs point to yes.

Gus still lived with us then, and one reason we liked the wagon was that the doors swung very wide open—easing the task of getting Gus in and out of the back seat. The cargo area was really large—making it easy to load his wheel chair in back without having to take the wheels off. In fact, we did not sign the contract until I went through that very test with Gus at the dealership.

The year was 1998, and I was awed by the technology—it had a trip computer that read out mileage, mpg, time, and temperature! It had electric windows (my first car ever with those)! Automatic locks! An indigo blue lit dashboard! ABS! Five airbags!

Just over 183,000 miles later, Fritz—as Beth nicknamed him—has lived on the ocean front, in Urbana, Ill., and on the mean streets of Chicago. I know other Passat owners have had trouble with theirs, but ours has been a champ, and to be honest—except for the roar of the engine, the car still runs like a top, and just hums at 75 mph. We’ve had a lot of great road trips in Fritzy. But it’s time.

Outside of one short stint in Washington, D.C., when I relied on my motorcycle and my roommate Pick for rides, I’ve had a car my entire adult life. So it’s kind of weird to contemplate. I know I’ll adjust. I certainly won’t miss the insurance costs, the monthly parking fees, the repair costs,.

But I think I will miss Fritz.

A woman who teaches two-year-olds who have visual impairments had me sign a few copies of my memoir, Long Time, No See for her at the Vision Forward conference I spoke at last fall. When I was signing her books I had no idea she’d been diagnosed with an eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa when she was in fourth grade. She emailed me later to explain that she’d been able to see well enough to drive until 2007. Her eyesight continues to deteriorate, however. Last October she took medical leave from her teaching job, and she’s on a waiting list to train with a Seeing Eye dog.

When she got home from the conference, this teacher managed to convince her book club to read Long Time, No See, too, to help them understand the adjustments she needs to make now.

A number of memoirs have been written by people who lost their sight in adulthood, and it is extremely flattering to have this woman choose my book from all of them. Her book club meets this Monday, and they’ve invited me to come to Milwaukee and join the discussion. I’m looking forward to the trip to meet them all and introduce them to Whitney.

Another woman I met at that same Vision Forward conference happened to email me this week, too, with news about her six-year-old son, Bennett.

Bennett and his companion dog Journey.

I wrote a post about Bennett here last year after his mom sent me a thank you note for the Braille copy of my children’s book, Hanni and Beth: Safe & Sound. Her thank-you was so moving that I wrote her back to ask if I could share it with my blog readers :

Dear Beth,I met you at the Vision Forward Conference in Milwaukee this past weekend. I purchased your book, Safe and Sound, for my blind 5 1/2 year old son, Bennett.

My husband read it with him tonight, while I worked on homework with my 9 year old. Bennett was so excited about the book. He told me, “I loved that book you got me. It’s a true story mom. And no one ever writes true stories for kids about people who are blind like me.”

Thank you for writing this story and reaching out to children who can not see. Bennett has a Children’s Companion Dog and he said when the story started, he thought for sure it was about his dog Journey.

Thanks again. And it was a pleasure meeting you. Keep writing and we will keep reading 🙂

The email I got from Bennett’s mom this week came from the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Bennett had 2 cornea transplants in his left eye years ago, but both had negative results. He and his parents traveled from Wisconsin to Pittsburgh this week to have Dr. Ken Nischal, one of the world’s foremost children’s eye specialists, try a cornea transplant in Bennett’s right eye this time.

Currently, the cornea (the clear tissue that’s about the size of a dime and covers the front of the eye) is the only part of the eye that can be successfully transplanted. People who have macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, or diabetic retinopathy, like me, have a disease of the retina. The retina is a thin tissue that lies in the inside of the eye and acts like the photographic film inside a camera. Corneal transplantation would not help those of us with retinal diseases, but scientific research resulting from eye donation could help future generations.

Cataracts, old age, poor eyesight, or cancer will not necessarily prohibit you from signing up to have your eyes donated after you die, and signing up to be an organ donor is much easier than you might think. A web site called Donate Life America provides a list of where to register in your state, and if you do decide to donate, make sure to tell your family your wishes as well.

Bennett’s mom says her son approaches each challenge with “a strength we never knew could come from someone so small” and requested I ask you blog readers to keep their family in your thoughts and prayers over the next couple weeks.

Thinking of you, Bennett, and sending all good wishes to you and your wonderful family.

That’s Ella–her brother Bryce is happy to have a sister.

This week brought some good news in the Finke extended family: Ella, who had been born to Beth’s niece Stacey and her husband Ryan prematurely, came home after a stay in neonatal intensive care.

In this day and age, one can say, “No big deal.” After all, preemies are common, we have folks scheduling births to accommodate busy calendars, we have people having extravagant baby showers and now—I understand—something called “sprinkles” for babies to be born after the first child.

It’s almost as if all this childbirth stuff is routine. I’m here to tell you: It ain’t. And to confess: Every time a friend or family member reports that they are expecting a baby, Beth and I hold our breaths a little.

Don’t get me wrong: We’re happy. But our experience with Gus nearly 30 years ago taught us something about birth: as commonplace as it is, it’s a ridiculously complicated miracle that should never be taken for granted.

For those of you who don’t know the story, Gus is our son. Conceived during an enthusiastic reunion after Beth had spent months at a blind rehab facility she nicknamed Braille Jail, he was the product of what I alternately describe as major contraceptive failure or unplanned parenthood.

Beth and I did not intend to have children—largely because she was diagnosed at a type 1 diabetic when she was seven. Diabetes had already cost her eyesight, and pregnancy can cause other very serious—up to and including fatal—problems for a diabetic.

Beth had a fantastic primary care doctor who ran a battery of tests, some of which could have revealed certain problems that for us, anyway, would’ve ruled out carrying through with the pregnancy. But they all came back clean, and he explained that if she/we wanted to, and if she/we committed to a bulletproof program to manage blood sugar levels, there was no reason we could not have a healthy baby without Beth suffering for it. And so we decided to carry on.

It was months of countless finger prick blood tests and weekly (at least) doctor visits. And everything checked out along the way. Babies of diabetic mothers tend to grow large quickly, and so we knew there was a prospect of an early birth by c-section. Indeed, Gus was delivered at just over 8 lbs. about three weeks early.

“Delivered” really doesn’t do the event justice. I was there for the procedure, and will never forget the sights and, frankly smells, and, well, let’s just say placenta is pretty psychedelic. Gus came out, the doctor said we have a boy, he gave a little squawk, and proceeded to try to leave the world as quickly as he had popped into it. I got a quick glance of him, they rushed him to a table in the corner of the OR, and it was a frenzy of activity and medical talk.

Beth and I had decided that we did not want to have more than one child, and that she would have a tubal ligation after the baby was born. Our OB/GYN, smartly and responsibly, said to us: “In light of what’s going on behind me with your baby, do you still want to go through with the ligation?”

YES! was our resounding, unified chorus.

Gus was given a 50/50 chance of making it through the night. Beth was in a pain-killer induced daze, but still had the wherewithal to hold my hand and say, “However it works out, we did everything we could.”

She fell out and I went home and sat on the couch, my view a tower of disposable diapers stacked in the corner of the living room, gifts from a baby shower.

Gus was in the neo-natal intensive care unit for more than a month. The days brought good news, bad news, ups, downs. I made multiple daily visits, Beth arranged rides to visit while I was at work, it was our second home.

Apart from our own drama, what I remember most is this: Gus and we had a lot of company in the NICU. Rows of distressed babies festooned with tubes and wires in incubators,  and distressed parents standing beside them. And unbelievably kind, capable staff—particularly the nurses.

We parents and doctors and nurses didn’t know a dang thing about each other but it was sort of like a college dorm. We got to know one another. We watched, with some envy, parents taking their babies home. We arrived to find a baby gone only to learn she hadn’t made it.

Gus, tough in his own way, proved to beat his odds. We eventually did bring Gus home, but only after learning he had a very rare genetic disorder that would leave him severely disabled. His difficulties had nothing to do with Beth’s diabetes.

It was impossible to understand. I saw him last week—27-year old Gus, that is. He’s doing swell in his little group home in Watertown, Wis., thanks to the good Badger and Packer fans at Bethesda Lutheran Communities.

I’d like to say all’s well that ends well. But it’s a lot more ambiguous than that. It’s still not really understandable.

One thing, though, that I’m sanguine about: When it comes to childbirth, our hubris can tempt us to believe we’re driving the bus. But we’re not. Best we can do is check the tire pressure, change the oil, and hope for the best.

Whether you believe in the wonders and complexity of biology, of God, or both (I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive), a healthy baby is one gigantic deal.

And I could not be happier for Ella and her folks.