It has been a long, cold, drawn-out spring in Chicago, so when a beautiful, warm day arrived, I decided to runwalk on the prairie path in Naperville. I didn’t get very far with running– there was a heaviness inside that I couldn’t shake. I slowed to a walk and soaked in the beauty around me. I tried to figure out why I was feeling so weighed down. I recognized that heaviness– it was the familiar feeling of stress. So many changes had occurred in such a short time. The countless trips to Michigan and the loss of my dad. The change from full time employment to part time. The additional projects I had taken on.
Out of nowhere, I started to cry. At first, I didn’t even know why I was crying. I was thankful for sunglasses and the mostly deserted path. I struggled to sort out the jumble of thoughts that were racing through my mind. The one that stood out was this: I missed my dad. I hadn’t slowed down enough in the last several weeks to allow myself to feel the loss.
A bird landed right in front of the path I was walking. When I saw the bird, I started to laugh. It was a red-winged blackbird. Because you see, up in Michigan, we had a red-winged blackbird that used to dive toward Dad’s head whenever he was out in the yard near the shore. And in all of my years in Illinois, I had never noticed a red-winged blackbird around me.
Someone asked me recently, “Do you wish you could hear?”
I had to stop and ponder that one.
If you asked me that question when I was nineteen, shortly after I became deaf from a fall while barefooting, I would have said, “Hell, yes.” No pause. No reflection there. The answer would have been simple: give me full-fledged hearing and I will dance a jig until the end of time.
I was born with hearing in the normal range. I can remember my Dad telling me stories about a dog named Scamp. My Dad worked double shifts, so I would crawl into bed when he arrived home and lie there while he told me stories. I was about five or six when the warning signs began showing– I’d misunderstand a sentence or would ask him to repeat the words. I grew up hard of hearing and had developed lipreading skills since I was young — I was firmly entrenched in the “hearing” world and knew no sign language.
I was miserable being hard of hearing. The struggle to lipread and understand people in group conversations was next to impossible at times. So I found my solace in books and in my small circles of friends who knew me inside out. Those friends accepted me so well and knew what to do to make communication happen.
The last shred of what I could hear without hearing aids was gone the moment I climbed into the boat after cartwheeling on the water. I didn’t realize it that day– I just figured I had water in my ears and it would subside. It wasn’t until the day that I left for college that I realized that “being deaf” was here to stay. I spent my college nights lying there in the dark and… crying. Grief was a heavy cloak that wrapped around me in the darkness. I cursed the piece of electronic equipment that I stuffed into my ear each day which did nothing more than bring environmental sounds to life and made lipreading a tad easier. I had already spent most of my life lipreading, but I could at least hear the sounds around me and turn when spoken to without the hearing aid. After that fall, there was nothing but silence without hearing aids. A blessing at night, indeed, when the roar of tinnitus eventually stopped. But it wasn’t a real blessing until I was deep into the journey.
College life was filled with deaf and hard of hearing friends; some who had arrived into the Deaf Community like me– with no knowledge of American Sign Language. I spent my days learning to lipread the interpreters and match their lip movements to their rapid hand movements. I took several ASL classes and slowly incorporated the language into everyday life. Before I knew it, life had become a happy journey down this new road. I met Joe–also deaf–who later became my husband. We spent twelve years traveling with a deaf volleyball team and playing in tournaments.
And then one day, I realized that I no longer grieved. Instead, I celebrated. There was much to enjoy from this new life path– an amazing language, a wonderful community and a blessed acceptance that a deaf life was indeed full and beautiful. And…three deaf and hard of hearing kids.
So, you can see why today, I pause and ponder the answer to the question, “Do you wish you could hear?”
The answer is a complicated one. On one hand, yes. I close my eyes and imagine being able to hear what others are saying when I hang out in groups. I imagine the sweet bliss of being able to go anywhere, anytime and have access to the audio jungle out there. But there is the sweet bliss of being content with how my life has unfolded on this journey; because you see, becoming deaf didn’t rob me of life, instead, it gave me a whole, new, beautiful life.
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