Atypical Coda

I am an atypical CODA (Child Of Deaf Adults). By that, I mean that usually Deaf parents start signing ASL(American Sign Language) to their babies, deaf or hearing, right from birth. Usually CODAs are bilingual, becoming fluent in ASL and English. They make awesome interpreters. My parents didn’t sign with my brother and me when they learned we were hearing. That was my mother’s influence. You see, she and her sister (Aunt Betty) were sent to Lexington School for the Deaf in New York City. It was the 1930s and Lexington was a strictly oral school. That meant my mother and my aunt were punished for using even natural pointing or gestures. They learned that sign language was nasty, ignorant and even animalistic. Both of them were browbeaten to this concept that neither was ever comfortable signing around people who could hear. Their parents reinforced the idea that they needed strong oral skills to become a part of hearing society. My grandmother came from a well-established Long Island family, descended from Revolutionary and Civil War heroes. My grandfather was an immigrant from Norway, arriving just before WWI with a secret he kept from my grandmother until after my aunt and mother were born. He had two deaf sisters and was himself losing his hearing. They weren’t wealthy by any means in the 1930s, but my grandfather was able to support Grandma and six children on what he made as a carpenter and fisherman. You could say they were WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) with all the morals and beliefs that go with it. I don’t mean to paint my grandparents in a bad light. My grandmother was my hero, loving and supportive and my safe haven. But they reacted as any set of parents would when learning their daughters were deaf: They were scared. What would happen to their daughters? How would they communicate and survive? And who would take care of them when the parents died (as all do)? Doctors assured my grandparents that the best thing they could do for their daughters was to send them to Lexington to learn to speak and function in the hearing world. They would grow up to be productive citizens as there were several types of jobs the Deaf were trained for. Still, my grandfather sat each of Mom’s four brothers down and made them swear they would always look out for their sisters. My dad’s family was completely different. My grandparents came to this country, also just before WWI, from County Sligo, Ireland. They settled first in Harlem and then in the Bronx. By the time I got to know my grandfather, he was already completely blind. I don’t know what caused him to lose his sight. My Grandma Molly was a loving woman I wish I’d gotten to know better. They were a rollicking Irish-Catholic family of six children. Dad was the only Deaf child. Early on, Dad’s family used made-up signs to communicate with him. He went to the New York State School for the Deaf in White Plains, NY. At that school, ASL was used freely. My dad was brought into Deaf World there, which is true of most Deaf kids. They learn their language and culture at most schools for the deaf – except for schools like Lexington where the students were made to feel ashamed of ASL and being Deaf. Dad’s family didn’t learn ASL. They didn’t really need to; they had their own adequate home signs to communicate that worked well with him. My dad was all for signing with my brother and me, but Mom flatly said NO. No signing with hearing people period, not even with the children. Dad was unhappy, but he loved my mother so much he gave in to her wishes. And so almost from the beginning, my brother and I were cut off from adequate communication with our parents. Not so with my cousins! Aunt Betty was even more ashamed of her deafness and signing than Mom was. She didn’t want her children signing but Uncle Bob couldn’t speak and insisted. Uncle Bob’s family was like Dad’s except they did learn ASL to communicate with him and his Deaf sister. Why did this happen? It might be easier by looking at the Deaf education timeline (on https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/asl/deaf-history-timeline). Setting aside Martha’s Vineyard, sign language came to the US from France. In the US, a man named Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet heard about French sign language and was looking for a way to educate Deaf children. He went to France, met Laurent Clerc, a Deaf Frenchman who signed, and brought him back to the US. Gallaudet and Clerc began successfully teaching Deaf children to sign as a way to communicate and learn. Things progressed nicely until Alexander Graham Bell decided sign language was not the way to go. He believed Deaf people would learn better if they were more “like” hearing people; in other words, using lip reading and speech instead of sign language. Worse, in 1888 hearing educators (none Deaf) gathered at the Milan Conference and decided sign language should be banned and Deaf children forced to learn lipreading and speech. In the United States, a lot of schools for the Deaf abandoned sign language and imposed oralism on their students, but not all. Some schools (like my dad’s) still used sign language. American Sign Language (ASL) is a legitimate language with its own rules of grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. My dad grew into a confident, charismatic young man “comfortable in his own skin.” He was proud to be Deaf. On the other hand, my mother and my aunt learned sign language in secret (the bathrooms of Lexington). They were retiring, unsure, and very ashamed of their Deafness and sign language. That’s how I came to be an atypical coda.   ALL MOMMIES & DADDIES ARE DEAF When I was a really little kid, let's say up to the age of 5, I believed that all grownups were just like my parents, deaf. It's not that I realized then that they didn't hear. That didn't come until we'd moved into a new neighborhood and I was no longer protected from ignorance and the loving arms of family nearby. This is what I remember seeing: In the house and with each other, my parents didn't use their voices to talk. They used their hands and signed to each other. It looked beautiful to me. It was like watching the puffy clouds sail by on a warm sunny day. Sometimes the little clouds danced and swirled; sometimes they were choppy and fast. My parents didn't use their hands to talk to me, and I believed that was because I was still little. They were using a language that only mommies and daddies used. My parents spoke and sang to me with their voices. I understood them clearly. I believed everyone else did too. I didn't know then that they were deliberately not signing with me, not because they wanted to keep secrets, but because my mother had been taught to believe that using hands to talk was “bad.” The 1930s-40s were a whole different time for my parents. As an adult, I've met Deaf people who are doctors, lawyers, teachers, CEOs, financial advisors; you name it, they can do it. I remember a meeting between a Deaf man and his manager. The man wanted a promotion and he said/signed, "I can do anything but hear." That's not the way it was when I was little. Sure, some deaf people went to college but many were printers like my dad, machinists like my uncle, key punch operators like my mom, or seamstresses. There's another difference about then and now that I bring up because it affects how I write. When I was a kid, people who couldn't hear were deaf. If they could hear a little then they were hard-of-hearing. Through the years, there have been lots of words that have come in and out of favor, among them “deaf-mute” and “hearing-impaired.” As for now, there's Deaf and there's deaf. What's the difference? It's got to do with deaf culture and the Deaf community. Here's a good explanation, taken from Deaf Empowerment “Deaf people do not see deafness as a disability so much as a way of life. By using a capital D for Deaf, they are identifying their cultural background. They use the capital D to let others know there is more to the word than just the inability to hear. If you see someone use a small ‘d’ deaf, they are referring to the hearing loss that most people think about when they hear the word. Big D refers to culture, small d refers to physical deafness. Meanwhile, back at the ranch -- or, I should say, the cottage -- I thought everyone's parents signed inside the house and then talked outside the house. That was a sensible explanation (to me) for why I didn't see sign language used anywhere else. Looking back, I realize that I must have seen my parents signing with my aunt and uncle in public. I must have seen my parents with their friends at picnics and parties. I don't remember how I rationalized that away. Now also, as a parent, I smile to myself and think, wouldn't it be cool if there really was a secret language just for the mommies and daddies in the world? MUSIC One year, my brother desperately wanted a set of drums for Christmas. I wasn't too surprised that my parents went out and got a set for him. What did surprise me Christmas morning was seeing my Deaf dad seated at the drums and playing them, and pretty well too! He laughed at the expression on my face. It's too typical to think that deaf people can't hear, so what are they going to do with music? Yes, Beethoven was deaf but he wasn't born deaf and he had some hearing, enough to make him a brilliant composer. He was able to remember sounds enough to continue composing after he lost his hearing. Anyway, Dad told me that he used to play the French horn when he was in school. He and the other band members learned their rhythm from the conductor. They learned not to play too loud or too soft. Awesome, eh? He was supposed to march in the victory parade with his band and with high schools from all over New York to celebrate the end of World War II but he missed out because of a ruptured appendix. My parents loved to dance and they moved beautifully across the floor. It was almost like watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. People marveled. "How can they do that when they can't hear the music?" Well, they felt the music's vibrations through their feet. When they were dancing there was usually a band playing loud enough for the vibrations to travel through the floor. If you've ever seen the lovely dance scene in the film “Children of a Lesser God” you get the idea. Marlee Matlin, who is Deaf, and William Hurt danced so gracefully together. My parents just loved to dance, even at home and with no music. Now that is a cool thing to see: Dancing with no music. When I was a baby, I cried around the clock. No one could figure out why. Was it that I was colicky? My parents tried everything. Then my dad got an idea that maybe it was too quiet in the house. He went out and bought a record player and a bunch of 45s. He bought anything with sound. And wouldn’t you know? It seemed to work. The sound of the music soothed me.