I started howling with laughter before I’d read a few pages. This is a very funny novel about what it’s like to lose your hearing as you get older. What set me off was the conversation Desmond had with his wife Winifred (Fred). She’s talking to him and he’s missing important clue words and misunderstanding her. She must repeat herself, sometimes to the point of “Oh, never mind!” It reminded me of conversations my husband and I have had! It can be hilarious and tragic at the same time.
Intertwined with Desmond’s difficulties navigating the hearing world now that he’s nearly totally deaf is a comedic side story involving a young graduate student pursuing Desmond to help her with her Ph.D. thesis. Think of Alex as a female George Santos and you can only imagine some of the complications she causes not only for Desmond but another professor she’s roped in.
Loss of hearing and the isolation it can cause is a thread throughout the book and that’s what I wanted to turn to. It’s scary to lose a sense you’ve had since babyhood. Some people do fear losing their hearing, believing then they won’t hear loved ones’ voices or music or birdsong anymore. I’m not as afraid of that because I grew up with Deaf parents. I am terrified of losing my sight.
I recommend this book to anyone. You’ll gain some insight into later age hearing loss and have a few good laughs as well.
I remember when I began learning American Sign Language at a Methodist Church for the Deaf. One of my classmates was an elderly woman named Myrtle. Myrtle was like the Desmond character in the book. She’d begun to lose her hearing gradually early on and was nearly stone deaf in her 60s. She had fine, clear speech but was isolated because she could no longer follow the conversations of family or friends in group settings. She was desperate to be able to communicate and had decided to take sign language. Sadly, I also learned this was Myrtle’s 3rd or 4th attempt. Her fingers were also twisted with rheumatoid arthritis, and it was difficult for her to form letters. Remembering the signs were beyond her. I felt sorry for her. Everyone in the class and the teacher were helpful, but she just couldn’t seem to get it down.
I mentioned earlier that some of the scenes between Desmond and Fred remind me of myself and my husband, Ted. He is mostly deaf from environmental noises. Like Myrtle, we've tried to teach him some fundamental signs but he has a hard time remembering how they're formed. His hands are also twisted with arthritis and overuse so some of the signs are difficult to make. He compensates well with his residual hearing and by making sure he faces the speaker.
Becoming deaf at a later age reminds me of the Big D, Little d designations. When you see big D Deaf, it means a person who was born deaf or became prelingually deaf. Before the advent of legislation for people with disabilities to have equal access to jobs and educations, Deaf children went to special schools. There they learned sign language from teachers and classmates. Deaf culture began in Deaf residential schools. Deaf people do not miss hearing. They are proud of themselves, their language, and their culture. American Sign Language (ASL) is now recognized as a foreign language with its own rules and syntax. It isn’t English.
Small d deaf refers to those with hearing loss but don’t identify with the Deaf community. Maybe they lost their hearing later in life, like Desmond. All their lives, they’ve only used spoken language and interacted with the hearing community. Learning to sign isn’t easy at an older age. Some deaf people were raised by hearing parents that wanted their children to assimilate easily into the speaking community. As children, they used lipreading to communicate. In the 1980s, parents willingly tried the use of cued speech, which uses a set of handshapes to help distinguish sound-alike words. In the 1990s, there was the miraculous cochlear implant and parents jumped on that technology almost with a sense of desperation.
Some deaf children become Deaf in their teens or later years. How does that happen? I worked in a school district that mainstreamed deaf and Deaf students into the hearing population once they got to middle school. A whole new world opened for deaf children and many quickly picked up ASL. At the age of 16, some of the deaf students demanded to have their individualized education plans (IEPs) changed so that they might have ASL interpreters. They began to learn about the Deaf culture from their classmates. As adults, they moved into the Deaf community, meaning they’d go to Deaf clubs and churches.
I. King Jordan was the first Deaf President of Gallaudet University. He wasn’t born Deaf. He was involved in a motorcycle accident at the age of 21 which severed the nerves in one ear and damaged them in the other. As traumatic as his loss was, he didn’t give up. He went to Gallaudet, having never met a Deaf person before and not knowing any sign language at all. Deaf people are generally very willing to help someone struggling to learn their language and he was able to move up to the point where he was considered a candidate to become President of Gallaudet University. Read more about him here.
This was much more involved than your usual book review but sometimes I just must travel where my thoughts take me.
