On Christmas Eve, I sat on the floor of my mom’s living room, her high school yearbook in my lap. After giggling at my teenaged parents in the Pep Club picture (sideburns for him, long, long hair for her), I flipped back to the sports section to see my dad’s picture on the baseball team.
Twelve pages over was the cross-country team; in it: 32 men, 0 women. For outdoor track: 41 men, 0 women. Two pages over, the indoor track team: 20 men, two women. Two women! I thought, but the caption explained their roles not as runners, but statisticians.
“It’s a shame too,” my mom said as she hung Christmas cards over the doorway. “I was really good at hurdles.”