The Art of Being Deaf: A Memoir

16. All Grown Up Now

167 16 All Grown Up Now Getting over Damian took some time. As usual, work was a good antidote. Over the next few months, I kept myself busy with a teaching gig at a university and took on a writing project for a major commercial management company. My friends helped me with other distractions: I swam up and down the pool each weekend; went for late afternoon rambles along the Sandgate foreshore; hiked up Mount Glorious, huffing and puffing and grabbing at my knees to catch my breath; and hosted Sunday lunches on the balcony of my apartment. I also read more books about deafness: two by deaf academics in the United States, and two by novelists, one English and the other American. In Writing Deafness, Christopher Krentz wrote about the ways nineteenthcentury American deaf and hearing writers thought about deafness. His description of “the hearing line, that invisible boundary separating deaf and hearing people” warmed me with its familiarity, despite its specter of separation. (I also discovered the correct meaning of the word “antebellum .”For some reason,I had always thought it was a type of fabric,perhaps a suede-leather-like concoction; maybe of French origin.It’s not,of course; I had confused it with vellum. Antebellum is a historical term referring to the period before the American Civil War. Odd, how one can get a fixed 168 Part Three idea about the meaning of words simply by the lilt and tilt of their vowels .) Christopher Jon Heuer’s mordant humor about his hearing loss in his anthology of essays, BUG: Deaf Identity and Internal Revolution, startled me.I laughed and felt uncomfortable at the same time.Heuer is dismissive of the difficulties others might have with his chaotic, conflict-embracing approach: “Deal with it.” The English writer David Lodge’s semiautobiographical novel, Deaf Sentence, and Philip Zazove’s family-saga novel, Four Days in Michigan, set side by side, provide a study of extremes. Both Lodge and Zazove have a hearing loss. Lodge’s loss is age-related, while Zazove has been deaf since childhood. Lodge approaches deafness as a hateful and humiliating impairment, which he attacks with self-pitying humor. I’m not a fan; maybe I’m overstating things, but I didn’t like the undertone of sneering at deafness that seeps through in Lodge’s novel. In contrast,Zazove took me on a Frommer’s tour of historical and contemporary deaf family life,deaf politics,the inequities of deaf education,religious cultures, North American history with its melting-pot immigrant culture, and Washington politics. I got to know Zazove’s vivacious fictional families so well that I wanted to meet them. I enjoyed thinking of myself as a member of a diaspora of deaf writers. All these things were restorative in their power, drawing me away from my sadness. During this healing time, on Sunday, April 6, 2008, four of my childhood deaf friends came to lunch at my home: Sharon, Jennifer, Kay, and her husband Kenneth. It rained heavily that day, a drought-breaking rain of near-biblical proportions.The gutters overflowed and flooded some streets, causing delays in the traffic. Kay and Kenneth arrived on time despite the chaos, followed not long after by Jennifer, and finally Sharon (who had taken a wrong turning off the motorway) arrived in a fluster of apologies. “I’m wet!” she laughed, shaking herself down.They were all cheerful about getting drenched in the race from their cars to my front door; the drama of rain, umbrellas, and damp hair was a happy distraction for us. I skittered about, foisting glasses of wine and fruit juice onto my guests, and saw that All Grown Up Now 169 their faces reflected my keenness for everything to go well for this reunion lunch. We watched the rain for a while, letting it guide our talk until we found the ease of our bearings with each other again. Over our plates of salad, barbecue chicken, and zucchini tart, our conversation dipped in and out of memories of our Deaf School days. Rosetinted glasses colored our stories as we spoke with affection about our teachers and their quirks. Sharon remembered Mrs. Mason’s crafts lessons; Kay said, “I’ve still got the plastic beaded coat hangers and place mats from those classes!” They recalled Mr. Thomas with the force of smitten love that children reserve for their...