Going Deaf In Middle Childhood --Prologue

I lost my hearing at the end of May, 1943. I was then enrolled in the state residential school in September of the same year and by Christmas my mother noticed a big difference in my voice and with my speech.

I had an uncle by marriage that was very hard of hearing and I maintained a good recollection of what his voice was like, so realized regretfully what was happening to me. A deaf voice "carries" no matter how well you modulate and some people have compared our voices to a fog horn!

Luckily for me, my mother, and then later on my own children, felt comfortable with assisting me with my speech difficulties and if I was unsure how to pronounce something, I was not ashamed to ask for help. While in public school one of the teachers complained to the administration and so I was sent to a speech therapist that was situated across campus in the grade school building. After only one session, I stalked out. It was very obvious to me that this woman knew nothing about the deaf. 'Speech, maybe, but the complexities of DEAF speech were way beyond her. I never went back.

Other than my own children, no one in my family learned to Sign. Not even fingerspelling. I do not recall resenting this slight and I turned into a skilled lipreader. I can and do socialize with both hearing and deaf persons equally well. And I feel doubly blessed.

My family did not Sign but my hearing friends did! To this day, my girlfriends that I ran around with in public school sign to me. I was a student of Drivers Ed but the instructor decided not to pass me because he thought I needed more experience than the average teenager. I felt badly when all of my buddies and fellow Drivers Ed students received their licenses, but I understood the theory behind the instructor's decision and accepted it.

I will not pretend that I do not miss my hearing. When my husband is listening to his Boze, I feel a little envious, but he always tells me what he is listening to, and even my parrot, Lenny sways to a mean tune! His favorite is old fashioned "Bop". When a clerk in a store gives me a bad time or when someone turns around and stares when they hear my deaf voice, I briefly think about how satisfying it would be to punch them in the nose, but so far I have resisted the temptation!

I have surrounded myself with what I consider beauty. I inherited my father's love of the land and have a mean green thumb. I even grow orchids in our bathroom grow window. My flowers are my music.



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*Suppose, my little lady, Your doll should break her head;

Could you make it whole by crying

Til your eyes and nose were red?

And wouldn't it be pleasanter

To treat it as a joke,

And say you're glad 'twas dolly's

And not your own that broke?

Suppose your task, my little man,

Is very hard to get;

Will it make it any easier

For you to sit and fret?

And wouldn't it be wiser,

Than waiting like a dunce,

To go to work in earnest

And learn the thing at once?

Suppose the world don't please you,

Nor the way some people do;

Do you think the whole creation

Will be altered just for you?

And isn't it, my boy or girl,

The wisest, bravest plan,

Whatever comes, or doesn't come,

To do the best you can?

*Borrowed from "Suppose" by Phoebe Cary

I cried because I had no shoes til I met a man who had no feet.

Lantana, September 4, 2007