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.)

Subtitles 2: The Reckoning

Sometimes, the crowd is wrong. That lone, piping, contrarian voice is the one you ought to listen to. I was reminded of that last night.

Even before the Oscar buzz, I had been interested to see Slumdog Millionaire. Several friends had seen and liked it, and some recommended that I see it. One friend did warn me, by email, that a good portion of the film was in Hindi. But three or four others shrugged it off, saying that the subtitles were only in passing, and that much of the film was not subtitled.

"You'll understand what's going on," they assured me.

I should have been suspicious of this. It's the same language that people used to get me into Fellini films. But I went with the crowd.

Sure enough, more than half of the first half of the film is subtitled. Worse than that, the parts that are subtitled are the parts of the film that actually forward the story. I had no idea which young child was playing the main character as a boy. I had no idea that he and the other boy were brothers. I knew there was some kind of awful treatment going on, but not why or for what purpose. I did figure out what had happened, but not until the second half of the movie, which is completely in English.

It's hard for me to define where the line is between films that rely too heavily on subtitles for me to understand them, and films that have subtitles but do not depend on the viewer to read them. I will say this, though: Slumdog crosses the line, and Gran Torino does not.

For various other reasons, I think Torino is a much better film anyway. Apparently, the Academy disagrees. Maybe, in this case, I am that lone, piping voice in the wilderness. Or maybe I just don't like Bollywood.

A Toast

Several years ago, at a party , I ended up in a small group near the table of booze. We had each just poured some wine, and a striking woman offered a brief toast. We all clinked our glasses. After the toast, the striking woman chided me for not making eye contact with her. She recited a superstition about not making eye contact during a toast. I won't repeat it here, but I will say that it is not true. I checked.

Whether or not you are physically capable of making eye contact, and whether or not you realize that I'm posting this well after New Year's Eve, let's toast to a great New Year, and let's hope for the best from a new president and a sort-of-new congress. I believe the original title of Stephen King's The Shawshank Redemption was "Hope Springs Eternal," so may we all (SPOILER ALERT) slowly chip our way out of prison, crawl out through three football fields worth of sewer, and revel shirtless in the rain.

Happy 2009, and thanks for reading.