Member-only story
I am who I am because my mother is deaf.
November 5, 2019
I watch a show, I see a young girl, perhaps five, skipping ahead of her mother. Her mother follows, perhaps a half block behind, a look of happiness on her face as she watches her little girl’s joy.
I tried to remember if that’s something I ever did. And I can’t. I never did that. I always stayed very close to mom, in case she needed me. I was her ears. I was her voice. My brother stayed close because he was shy. But I stayed close because I was needed. Because there was no one else to do the job for her. The job that must be done. To help her be a wife and a mother and a person in a world of hearing people. It was my responsibility. I didn’t know that. But I knew that. I fulfilled my role. Where there’s a vacuum, I’ve always stepped in to fill. She had me on the phone as early as the age of four, making doctor’s appointments. I thought nothing of it, no trepidations. Whatever my mom told me to do, I simply assumed I was capable of doing. I was never afraid, so long as she was confident, so was I.
When I was in first grade, we were assigned to go home and read to our parents. I’d sit on her lap and read. She didn’t know what I was saying. She couldn’t hear my voice. She didn’t know if I was pronouncing the words correctly. (I was.)
