The Left Arm

Those who know me know my story about my arm.   My left arm.  Now that it's summer and I wear shorter sleeve shirts - maybe a tank top or two- I see the left arm. The left arm reminds me of one day when I was five years old. I'm sure many of my friends and relatives have stories about a traumatic injury in their life.  When their bike ran into a car, when they fell off the bunk bed and broke their arm, some kind of accident.  Well I had one. I've only had one that was this injurious, and well, it left its mark.

I was five, and like all five year olds, I was trying to be all big in my world, and I was surrounded by older kids.  I wanted to be big like them.  Do things like them, be with them, be one of them.  One day in the summer, my mom got a babysitter for us. It must have been a regular week day, because she had a dentist appointment. I don't know where dad was, probably at work or maybe he was at the dentist too--I don't know, and all I know is we had the teenage girl from next door as our babysitter.  She was taking care of us like teenage girls do by telling us to go outside while she watched a soap opera; problem was is her kid sister, who I desperately wanted to be with and do things with, wanted the older teenage sister to drive her somewhere.  Somewhere other than here hanging out with babies like me and my sister.  The teenage babysitter argued with her and basically said, "Are you kidding.. I'm babysitting and no, I'm not driving you somewhere."   Well I heard this conversation and being the little smartie pants I was, I had a great idea. I thought, "The kid sister should ride the tandem bike they had in the garage. That way she could go to the friends house, pick her up and they would ride back together on the tandem bike".  

Problem solved! I'm so smart!  I heard the kid sister storm out of my house in a huff... and I ran out of the kitchen down our hall way to tell her about my great five year old  idea.   Our house was a strange house.  It was a government house, rented by my parents who worked at the state deaf school.  It was a long-almost trailer house size- house, kind of modeled on a military barrack. The rooms were just organized in a long sequence so the living room was in front of the dining room, the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom and bedroom.  A long row of rooms.  Well I had a ways to run to the front of the house mid-way from the kitchen so I was running... running fast down that hallway to the front door.  

I was at full peal speed when I flung my arm out to the front door - with a glass single pane window where a screen should have been- but wasn't and and my little hand hit the glass - full bore. The glass didn't go with my force to open the door, the glass  broke. All over my arm.  My tender five year old chubby little arm.The sharp single pane glass sliced it, shards of glass falling into open gaping L shaped skin flap and other gaping skin flaps that were immediately gushing bright red blood.  All over the front porch.  I vividly remember this. I looked down, whimpered a bit, and then SCREAAAAAAAMMEED.  The babysitter came running. She screamed, my baby sister screamed.  The babysitter ran away and must have ran next door to get someone - her mom- her dad- I don't know.  Someone came running, and next thing I knew, I was in the bathroom with the babysitter and she was trying to get some control of the situation.  She grabbed the purple towel that hung on the towel bar. The pretty towel  - that was  "for pretty" " not for bath" my mom would sign.  I groaned, she wrapped my little arm, glass shards and all in the towel, and somehow her dad was there then, and drove us all to the hospital emergency room about  25 blocks away.   I'm sure we were going pretty damn fast.

Next thing..maybe I passed out..(my adult mom instinct tells me I probably did), I am laying there in a ER room with a nurse, and a doctor. I'm crying like a baby, but there's a nurse and she's holding my other hand and she is nice.  The doctor is picking out glass. I can see it and hear it tinging in a little silver bowl.  Uh.   Then my mom and dad come in.  I don't know how they got in there... but they let them in, and I started crying again.  My mom was a wreck, she was crying, my dad was upset. I don't know what they saw but after while everybody calmed down and I came out with my left arm all wrapped from wrist to armpit in a huge gauzy wrap. It looked  like a mummy arm.   I remember my Dad  rushed to a drug store to buy me something to cheer me up, because on the drive home with  there was a HUGE bag of candy and a bag of new coloring books and crayons.  I bet they knew I would be spending a lot of time inside and maybe coloring would cheer me up.  

I colored for days.  I couldn't go outside. My mom kept a serious eye on me and didn't let me do ANYTHING except rest and color. I colored houses, people, animals. I gave everyone on my block a coloring page because it was my thank you for the booty of stuff  I received to "get well". I was sick of the candy that I ate too much of, and I wanted to go outside and play.  Everyone else was outside.  I wanted to be outside too and it was HOT. My neighborhood friends were out in the sprinkler and those blue plastic pools.

So my mom and aunt invented this way for me to go outside and cool off.  A bread bag.   An Eddy's Bread bag. All the moms kept them around for some reason, to stuff  laundered and still damp cotton shirts into to iron in the morning, as a sandwich bag, what have you... there were plastic bread loaf bags around. So she put my injured five year old arm in the bag, tied it at the top with some yarn, smiled at me and signed " it's good now, you can go outside with cousins, no swimming, but you can play in water sprayer- go play."

Really Guys?   Me and my bread bag arm.  I spent the next couple of  weeks over the  hot summer with a plastic bread bag on my arm anytime I needed a bath or wanted to play outside.  You remember old fools-- the stitches from long ago could NOT get wet. They would get infected and gross so, you had to keep an injury like my gashed up arm with 500 stitches impeccably clean and dry.  On a five year old!?  Really?

I'm lucky I have my arm. I've been told it was a pretty serious injury  being very close to damaging major nerves and leaving me with a useless arm.  I have 5 gashes that over the past mmm -40 some years have faded and are just a reminder of that summer.  People sometimes notice them when I have totally forgotten about them and point out the sign of a catastrophic injury.  Those scars sort of left a mark physically and emotionally. I don't really care for sleeveless tops and tanks. Maybe it's the scars and the flabby arms I recently found to be even more unattractive.  Yeah, that too.   I never really consciously knew that I liked to be covered,  but when summer is over, I find comfort in covering up the arms.  And those battle scars with the old glass door is forgotten.

Flo Ellen

It's her birthday today. And I miss her terribly.  There are days when I ache for her sweet smile and quiet demeanor. I miss her help, her guidance and friendship. I miss her profoundly and it's a deep grief I cannot get over, and I know I'm not alone in missing and grieving for a mother.

But, I remember her today. And a few things things that bring her back to me.  
She wore White Shoulders. Syrupy sweet gardenia, and other florals. It smelled like her. When I smell gardenia anything...it's my mom.   I don't even know if  you can find that anymore.  I loved that smell. In fact, for awhile there was a bottle left from her house, and I wore it for awhile.  But it wasn't the same.  When I encounter that scent, either on another woman, or a fleeting memory scent; it's like she's here.  It only belonged to her.  Sure my sister and I would try to find our signature scents, we ran through a collection of Estee Lauder and high priced designer fragrances, I don't know if we've ever settled on "our fragrance".  But my mom did. Probably for more than 50 some years, she never strayed (at least too far- there was a moment when she was Elizabeth Ardened by the sales woman at The Bon) but White Shoulders defined her. In fact,when I was little I would look at the cameo silhouette of the woman and her naked shoulders on the bottle next to my moms lipsticks and jewelry box, I was convinced it was my mom.

Her handwriting. It was perfect.  You don't even see it anymore. Completely stylized, perfect formed cursive writing. Since she was deaf, her handwriting defined her personality. Somewhat formal, deft, intricate, and perfect.  Like her.  It sort of  was a sense of frustration to us as a family, because her handwriting if anything was a production. Writing a check at the grocery store; took preparation, the correct pen (never red, or black-only blue) and the check at the right angle, and it would take her at least 3 to  4 minutes to write out the check.  Forty-five dollars and 69/100 ~~~~~~~~~DOLLARS. Certainly not a swipe of a debit card or a hastily scribbled out check.  Her signature was the same-every time and there was never a short cut. Perfect F E H p e.  Always. 

To the check-out clerk and people behind her in line,what that was about they could never figure out; but for my mom it was her purpose to write the perfect note, letter, phrase or assignment on the blackboard or white board. In a cursive or print style that was so perfect it was text book.  I've often wondered why she was so attentive to her writing style. Was it something drilled into her during her years at the Deaf school? "Make sure you write clearly so people will understand you, and make sure it is graceful and beautiful because that is the impression you leave?"   I think so.  Because that is the impression she left on many people.

I came across a heartbreaking memento recently in my moms collection of things.  It haunts me.  My mother spent her life not in her family home, but in a school. A school she was sent away to because of her deafness. For her it was a refuge, because there she was with people who could communicate with her, teach her, and help her become the wonderful woman she became.   Her family home, was perhaps difficult at times. Her parents were not communicative with her. They tried to learn her sign language, but I know it must have been a barrier. So in her family, she was isolated.   But these mementos I found recently sort of are a peek into a loving relationship with her mom and dad- it was something she obviously treasured.

My mom had a "notebook" of signatures, poems people would write, maybe an autograph or two. I think it was sort of like a personal "year book".  The book is gone, but she saved two of the pages.  I ALMOST threw them away thinking they were scrap notes that she had hundreds of because deaf people always save notes.  I'm so glad I didn't. 
Her dad wrote in it:  July 1945  - She was 13
" Blue waters may between us roll and distance be our lot; but if we fail to meet again dear Flo, forget me not." Dad. 

Her mom wrote in it:  July 1945
 " Be good sweet maid and let who will be clever. Do noble things, not dream them all day long. And so make a life, death and that vast forever- one grand sweet song."  Your mother.

I cried the first time I read those notes. I keep them now as a memory of her and her life.

Happy Birthday Mom. I love you.




Mom writing a order for the waitress



I'm a CODA

So, I'm a "Child of Deaf Parents"- CODA.   Some people think that CODA is a acronym for something sinister like alcoholics or something. But in deaf culture circles, we all know what a CODA is.  And for what's it worth; being a CODA was actually pretty cool.    I think there were some in my town that sort of looked on our family and other deaf parent families with pity or curiosity, but all of us turned out just great. Probably better than most families with a bit of dysfunction.

Being a child of deaf adults had it's ups and downs. I know I share the same backgrounds and history as a lot of people that grew up that way. And what's interesting, is now over the past some years; the similar scenarios that a generation of us had in common- are not so common anymore. Because; the Deaf Adults and Deaf Parents and their children today are not the same as a generation ago.

It's been awhile since I got in touch with my "deaf culture" side.  Since my parents died, it's been slightly removed from my current frame and place. But once in awhile, I get together with some deaf relatives ad my mom and dad's friends, and share a night of gossip and catching up. It's great to do that, and it makes me wistful for those times with my parents again. But I've noticed, that the other generation of deaf adults that I've run across, don't have that bond with other deaf parents and their children.  Maybe it's because so many of the next generation of deaf adults/parents didn't attend an institutional school; they were mainstreamed into public schools. Their lives were centered around making sure they fit into the HEARING world and a tag along interpreter. So they entered the dating, workforce and adulthood life sort of by themselves.   Not with a tight knit bond of "deafies" who did everything together like my parents did with their circle of friends.  It's different, this generation of deaf adults-parents that  may have hearing children like my parents did, but they either married hearing spouses and work in a "hearing" world.   The CODA experience for mainstreamed Deaf Adults  today  is not the same as the CODA experience of us who had parents who grew up in the institutional setting and worked with deaf people. And to me, that is a sad thing.

I feel a bond with foreign immigrant families whose children were born English speaking but at home the foreign language was spoken. It was the same way at my house.  I feel an identity with those new immigrants, whether Hispanic, Asian, Slavic, even middle eastern families.  The new immigrant  parents struggle with the language, the "English" world,  the American culture, and lean on their English speaking children to translate the world so it makes sense.  They stay close to their communities,and ethnic neighborhoods  and are engaged with others like them. They socialize together, worship together, marry each other, and eventually a generation later, they're all melded into the American soup pot.  But for a generation; there's that sticky mess of part of the family not quite in the mainstream.  I know it well.  Lived it.

The Note Pad: 
I was the oldest child, so many times the responsibility of communicating with the "hearing world" was left to me.  This story is common with many CODA's, bearing the responsibility of making sure our parents were understood to the outside world.  I ordered food for my parents at restaurants, made appointments, even having to talk to police, doctors or bankers, about very personal information no child should ever have to do. My parents were fiercely independent,and for years they were part of the group that rejected interpreters; so there were times, that my sister or I needed to step in because that writing pad that my parents brought with them everywhere -well it just doesn't work sometimes when things are not clear or you don't need to tell the waitress "bring some ketchup" on a note pad.  But that note pad was always there.  We found a box of them when we cleaned out my parents house.It made me laugh, and today, deaf people have the freedom to use email, text, and tty's and video relay to communicate without involving their children.  I know my parents always had the security of the note pad  or an interpreter, but somehow knowing that that their children were there to always speak for them; is comforting to me even now.

Your House is Loud:
You would think having two deaf parents would make for a silent home. Wrong. Our house was loud.  Because with profoundly deaf parents, they never had any idea how much noise they were making.  Making meals was very loud. Huge pots and pans, dishes, cupboard doors,running the water, the disposal, dishwasher even if you were trying to read or study...  it was crazy how loud things were, and my sister and I would just turn up the radio or tv to stifle the sound they were making, so then it was even louder. I never realized how loud until my husband to be came to meet my parents and he couldn't believe the racket.  

You Probably Got Away With Everything:
This is not true. Ask any CODA. I think deaf parents are hyper-sensitive parents; and they KNOW when their kids are screwing off.  They know the weird looks from other parents when their kid is doing something inappropriate like having a tantrum in the middle of a store. Or even worse, your name in the paper because you did something bad, like a ticket or something worse.  CODA's of my generation were drilled to NEVER embarrass their parents.  It's the code of a CODA.  Don't embarrass, humiliate or draw attention to the Deaf Parent.  "Because you never know, THEY could come and take children away because some police might think Deaf Parents are bad parents and cannot know what their children are doing because they can't hear"  Am I right CODA's?   (head nod)

Deaf Church:
I will tell you this.  Deaf Church is very quiet. At least my experience was.  My parents belonged to and started a congregation of Deaf Lutherans or what have you. They were not the "Deaf Catholics" they  had their own church and interpreter.  The Deaf Lutheran Church was different and quiet.  No music unless you count 2 or  3 deaf ladies up at the alter signing Onward Christian Soldiers.  Somehow the impact was missing- at least for me the hearing kid who had sang it and heard it with the big organ at the big Lutheran church downtown with a congregation of 300. Mmmm yah, it wasn't the same.  Just a lot of silent hands, sometimes angry hands, and maybe a lay minister feebly trying to sign to his new congregation because he was a lay minister who just learned sign.  I did not like Deaf Church, nor did I like Hearing Church, because my sister and I were like the two little orphan children with the neighbor who drove us to church every Sunday.  Parent-less, stared at, pitied at the coffee hour, because while other parents were chatting it up and having donuts... my parents were at their Deaf Church.  I was a lost soul-even in Church. It has affected me years later even to this day.

I Can Finger spell Faster than You:
I remember it well. The day some girls in my grade school discovered "sign language". I was mortified.  I could not understand why these little Brownies were making it THEIR MISSION to learn to finger spell and learn sign language.  It was like they demanded entry into my secret world with my family and deaf friends. Why did they want to know that? Was it some kind of test for Girl Scouts?  I would see them practicing and hand spelling to each other like it was secret code.  Many in my school never knew I had deaf parents.  Then one day, I couldn't STAND it! They were all in a little circle, proudly spelling to each other with the little alphabet card they got somewhere, and I said; "You know, I can finger spell faster than any of you"  and I whipped it out. Right there on the playground. 4 seconds flat- the whole alphabet, even the crazy hard Q and R ,that twist your whole hand and K and P that no one EVER gets. Expertly. I think that was the first time I was proud of knowing how to sign.  Yeah.. next time you think you're in your secret code talking about something.. I'm watching you.

Deaf Movie Night:
For the hearing reader, this probably doesn't make any sense to you, but I assure you, it still is a problem today.  For many Americans, going to movies is like a non-event. You see a trailer, you want to go, you buy a ticket, get some popcorn, and you're there immersed in movie-land.   So as a child, I wanted to go to movies, so we really didn't get to go until we were older and could go to the movies by ourselves. I remember going to Sound of Music with my Mom and Dad; which looking back on it.. what did they get out of it? It was the SOUND OF MUSIC for God sake. The irony doesn't escape me.  So to get around the problem of going to movies that were meaningless dialogue and musical scenes which most deaf people would fall asleep at, they would go see westerns because at least there was guns, good guys and bad guys, and horses.  The deaf group my parents hung out with had a monthly Deaf Movie Night.  It usually required a giant noisy film projector- borrowed from the school- usually in the gym at the school, and later it moved to a room at the basement of a bank, or a basement room of a real estate office, or finally someones house in their basement.  It also required a screen and then later it ended up being a white bed sheet tacked on a wall.  My dad and a few other dads took jabs at being the projectionist and making sure that the next film reel was ready to load into the projector.  If the film ever broke.. well  there went 8 minutes of the movie, and guess you'll figure it out.  The movies for Deaf Movie Night were always CAPTIONED FOR THE DEAF,  and in black and white and were at least 30 years old and rarely acclaimed award winning movies. Rarely was there a color one- if there was, I wasn't there for it.  The deaf families would organize the steel folding chairs in rows (like a theatre), and there would be popcorn, and candy that the Deaf Club would have stashed away, but bring it out for an intermission and sell the candy bars and pop and popcorn to the CODA's that would stand around in the back.  The parents would visit and the CODA's would hang out and play games with each other. Rarely did the kids ever watch the movie.  I know many of my CODA friends have the best memories of Deaf Movie Night.  But think about that the next time you go to a movie. They're not captioned like a tv programs, so unless it's a "captioned" special evening.. the deaf world is left out until it comes out on DVD or online.  So 21st Century.

Secret Shame
Ok, I can go on and on about life as a CODA. I may do another story or two. But here's my secret shame and I know some other CODA's agree.  I'm sure as a baby and toddler my parents voice was their voice and I knew no other. It was sweet, nurturing, babbling, cooing just as other parents do with their babies and I'm sure I developed my sense of voice from their baby-speak.  But, there was a point in time, when I knew that my parents voice wasn't like the others.  Maybe it was in a grocery store or at a park. Maybe it's when I misbehaved and wasn't "listening" or obeying what they had told me to do. STAY HERE.  NO. BE GOOD GIRL. Well, I never noticed their Deaf Voice until people around me noticed it. And I noticed most of deaf parents I knew never used their Deaf Voice unless they HAD TO. For good reason, it drew attention to their deafness.   And for me, I didn't like it.  Because deaf parents who were been born deaf, or lost their hearing, have NO idea what they sound like. It's like shouting into a wind tunnel, with no perception of volume, tone, affect.  So to have your deaf parent use the DEAF VOICE- in public. Wow.. get ready. If you never heard one, I think it's like a combination of a elk bugle, mooing cow, an old dried out saxophone.  I think that's why CODA's generally are pretty well behaved children because they know... mom might use her DEAF VOICE and then it's over.   It's all over.

I Sign
I sign well.  In fact, I sign as well as someone born to into a Hispanic family knows Spanish as their first-second language.  I know the dialects, the slang, the nuances, the formal language, and the "shortcuts" which for most is the true language: American Sign Language.  ASL.  But admittedly, I'm not proficient at it. I think as CODA's  there was one parent who signed to us in ENGLISH, and the other who signed in ASL.  For my family, my mother ( the teacher) was always signing to us in Signed English- proper noun verb order- and our Dad who used ASL, and that would be a completely different language than English.   I really believe whether this was intentional or not; that one parent would be the translator /Signed English/ signer for the children, and then it would be "translated" to the other parent.  Sort of a High German - Low German for those who follow linguistics.  But there are days, when I am jealous of the super qualified interpreter I see on TV that is deftly interpreting or a new deaf person I don't know well signing  in total ASL- hands flying, signs I don't recognize, syntax I don't recognize, and I don't get it.  How does that happen?  Does a Spanish speaking person immersed in a language and culture from birth - suddenly lose their ability to "hear" their language?  Or do I just need a dose of deaf culture now and then.  I miss it.  Really I do.

Thanks for reading... ily.