Seeds of Disquiet: One Deaf Woman’s Experience

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---------------1---I was the second child born to parents who had both been eldest children. My ancestors were of hardy stock, and my extended family is close and boisterous on one side, scholarly and intense on the other. My mother was raised in Waterville, Maine. Her father, Cramp Webber, operated a dairy farm on land that had nourished his wife's family, the Coodwins, for generations. The lush, gently curving fields were grazed by cows that had only passing interest in small girls but were extremely mindful of the movements of Cramp's collie. Cramp Webber stood well over six feet in height and was an imposing figure even in his field clothes. Although he was a man of few words, I never feared him. When he sat down to rest at the end of a long day, the tenderness with which he stroked his loyal collie's broad head clearly showed his gentle nature. Cram Webber was a stoic. She, too, was spare with her words, and her blunt statements were made with total conviction . She took the bounty from the fields, of which corn and strawberries were my favorites, and turned them into meals that I always ate too much of. Her flaky biscuits and her lemonbanana ice cream, which she froze in ice cube trays, were tastes 5 Seeds of Disquiet I lived for. Gram was a typical country cook; she used no recipe books. Every ingredient in her dishes was measured by some variation of a pinch or a handful. My great-grandmother Goodwin also lived on the farm. She had deep lines on her face from years of being warmed by the sun, and her back had curved in a perpetual stoop. Each morning she gathered her white hair in a bun and went to work without fanfare. Gram Goodwin was never far from the gardens she loved. I watched her bend to pick peas or weed beets and marveled at the sureness and economy of her movements. I always thought of her whenever I read the poem mounted on Gram Webber's kitchen wall: The kiss of the sun for pardon, the song ofthe birds for mirthOne is nearer God's heart in agarden than anywhere else on earth While most of the farmland had been cleared, magnificent old trees still sheltered the big white farmhouse and lined the lazily-flowing roads. Beyond the fields I had a view of the glorious Kennebec River, often cluttered with logs heading downstream to the pulp mills. At the edge of the farm, a cluster of tall pines ringed the family graveyard. I was fascinated by the size of the grave mounds, and I stretched out on some of the larger ones to get the full measure of their length. I had a suspicion that Paul Bunyan's offspring had married into the Goodwin family. Gram Webber was fond of wild birds. She had several feeders to entice them, despite their eagerness to pillage her blackberry and raspberry bushes. Gramp had built a flagstone terrace behind the house, with a stone fireplace and a roof to protect the terrace from rainstorms. Gram had added a large white picnic table, benches, and lounge chairs, and we often took our meals there. The air was sweet with the scent of lilac and lily of the valley, which grew in profusion nearby. 6 Seeds of Disquiet My father's parents, the McIntoshes, lived in a solid brick house in Lisbon Falls, a couple of hours south of Waterville. They were both natives of the area. Gramp was short and powerfully built. Gram didn't clear five feet in height, and I never knew her to have a waist. Gramp McIntosh liked to dabble at farming. He grew only a few salad vegetables. Cucumbers and radishes seemed to be the limit of his interest. He quickly taught me to appreciate their cool crunch on a hot summer day. He also grew a nice crop of rhubarb next to the house. I loved the taste of rhubarb stewed with sugar to blunt its tartness. Soon after I was born, Gram and Gramp moved to a house closer to the post office and next to the Episcopal Church they attended. Gramp McIntosh was the town postmaster, but he also played many other roles. He was a politician, a real estate agent, a church elder, a member of the Masonic lodge, and...