Trump Card

One of the odd things about parenthood, other than that it's the title of a Ron Howard film that was made into a TV series more than a decade later, is that it trumps nearly everything else in your life. This isn't a secret: if anything, movies underestimate how all-consuming the responsibility can be. But what the movies don't tell you is that, at a point, it just becomes a fact of your existence. I guess that's not quite dramatic enough for Hollywood, but it's humanity at work. You accept that your primary focus in life is no longer you, but your child, and you move on.

So, why the lack of posts in the last (gulp) three months? It's not really from a lack of material to write about: there have been several instances of my not-not-blindness colliding with the seeing world, and I'm hoping to catch up on some of those in the coming weeks. It's also not entirely because of the lack of time, although between taking care of my child and working mostly from home, I'm busier than I've ever been,

No, my silence here has much more to do with a sudden shift in self-identity. Namely, I think of myself as a dad before I think of myself as a blind guy now.

Part of this comes from people's reactions in stores: cashiers spend much more time trying to get my baby to smile than paying attention to the way I lean into the credit card machine, so I don't have to answer questions nearly as often. I certainly don't mind that.

But even without that, my focus has just changed from myself to someone else. It's a little like getting into a long-term relationship, but even then, you're sharing the spotlight with someone else. Having a child takes the spotlight off yourself almost completely. I can imagine some people being terrified of this, but I actually love it more than I can say.

Still, there's a lot to explore about navigating the world with my idiosyncratic eyes, baby-strapped-to-chest or not, and I plan to write about it. And thanks, everyone, for talking back to me!

(That's "talking back" in the good way, not the way my child will learn in a few years.)