Bowling Blind

Last year I inherited my grandfather's shoes. But it was my grandmother who gave me her eyes and the cone dystrophy that's at the center of this blog.

Grandpa Dan had been a league bowler in Illinois. He'd once bowled a perfect game. But I have never and will never bowl a perfect game, because I grew up in Boston. And that means I grew up with candlepin bowling. 

I could wax nostalgic on this great New England pastime, but this is a blog about vision loss. I'll let this vintage article about candlepin bowling explain the game to all you barnies out there. And here's a photo of the candlepin lanes I once called home in Davis Square:

I started bowling when I was six, and even then I had trouble seeing the tall, skinny candlepins. Had I ventured up the lane, I would have understood their triangular layout, but from far away they looked like a set of clenched teeth waiting to be knocked out. And knock them out I did, like some maniac dentist who hurls 2-pound marbles into his patients' open mouths until someone tells him that the game is over. When it came time to tally the score, I usually thought my 6 was a 7, not because I was a cheater or a spoilsport, but because the ninepin was hidden behind the three and I just couldn't see.

On a trip to Boston last week, I went candlepinning with my mom. I know she reads this blog, and probably wasn't thinking of how much my vision has waned when she told me that I could do better every time I missed my pins altogether. I thought of my Grandpa Dan, the tenpin (a.k.a. "big ball") league bowler whose shoes I'd inherited, and how he'd also lost his vision, only it was suddenly when age-related macular degeneration set in. And I thought of how even into his 90s, even with a white cane and dark glasses, Grandpa Dan continued to bowl. 

So I, now, standing in my grandfather's shoes, wearing my grandmother's cone dystrophic eyes, breathe with ball in hand, tapping into all my senses. Legs run forward, arm swings back, and I bowl. I bowl a strike, and then blow it in the next frame with a gutter ball. I score a 7, but the now automated scoring system tells me it's actually a 6. No one to argue with, just balls to bowl, pins to fell, shoes to wear, and eyes that see differently with the passing of each frame.