The Art of Being Deaf: A Memoir

4. A Great Big Wash of Tears

33 4 A Great Big Wash of Tears Be careful what you pray for. The refrain echoed in my mind as I went about the business of rebuilding my life back home. My old public service career in Queensland held the same appeal as yesterday’s leftovers. I lasted just ten days before handing in my notice. My manager was gracious, and she wished me well. “What are you going to do?” My career plans were vague, but I answered with the boldness that resilience calls for.“I’m going to write. I’ll work for myself as a freelance policy analyst and write.” She nodded. We both knew I was faking my courage, but even false courage creates its rewards. Work projects came my way, and a real estate agent called me about an apartment overlooking the Brisbane River. It had the feel of a tree house,perched up high in the gable of a family home.I moved there rather than put out the tenants in my own Art Deco apartment just down the road. I returned to my pre-England routines, including my daily walk and weekly swim,and picked up the habits of old friendships as best as I could. I wasn’t entirely successful. Some friends complained that I had changed in a way that they did not like, describing me as “distant.” Despite their entreaties, I remained reluctant to talk about the final weeks of my time in England.This was difficult territory to negotiate, because despite my grief 34 Part One for Seumas,I valued all that I had experienced during my eighteen months in England, but I couldn’t find the right words to explain this to myself, let alone to anyone else. I still struggle, all this time later. I fell out of favor with a couple of people who lost patience with my reticence,but my closest friends stayed the course with me.They fed me,asked occasional questions, tolerated my confusion, and took me to my favorite holiday retreat on Stradbroke Island, where we swam in a sea inhabited by ancient turtles. My mother sat with me many times over several weeks,tapping her fingers on the chair,before she finally asked,“What on earth happened?”Her question tore more tears from me, provoking her to comment, “You don’t have much luck with men, do you?” My tears dried up in a wheeze of outrage, but before I could defend myself, she ruminated, “Never mind, I’ve never had much luck either.” Given that she had been married for forty-seven years to my father until his death eight years earlier,and was by then eighty years old with nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, I looked askance at her. In between times, I wrote. I had finished my essay on deafness, “I Hear with My Eyes,”and given it to a prospective publisher.In this essay,I wrote about my enthusiasm for my childhood deaf friends and recounted what my teachers had told me. I also wrote about my mother’s persistence in making sure that I learned to communicate by speaking rather than signing . I crafted a selection of anecdotes, ranging in tone, I hoped, from sad to tender to laugh-out-loud funny. I speculated on the meaning of certain incidents in defining who I am and the successes I had enjoyed as a deaf woman in a hearing world.I searched carefully for what I wanted to say and concluded my essay with the words “I can listen, speak and communicate . . . precious gifts sown in my life when I was just a child.”While I believed in the truth of these words and still do, I was also aware that by ending the essay in this way, I had not taken the opportunity to tackle the status quo of deaf people’s standing in the world. Somehow, I had implied that it was better to be deaf and to speak than not, but I had not sufficiently explained why I believed this or even challenged why this should be so. I sat on my discomfort and hoped it would go away. I told myself it was not important. A Great Big Wash of Tears 35 While I waited for the publisher’s reply, I wrote about other things. I wrote about my hopes in my diary as soon as I woke up...