Field of Deaf Dreams (Reprinted from Medium.com)

I remember sitting in the back seat for the 3-hour drive to Alumni day at the New Jersey Residential School for the Deaf. I’m wearing a pale flowered shift made soft from afternoons of fluttering on the clothesline and I could see the anticipation in Mommy and Daddy’s hands as they talked about the day to come in sign language. They were Deaf, I was their hearing daughter and the signs that tumbled from their hands was my first language, my “native hand.”

This is where my father lived from when he was 9 years old until 18, far away from his blood family but with another family that he was closer to. His Deaf family. Here he became what he never could be in hearing world; a scholar, an athlete, the class president, a popular. This is where he had friends, real friends that he could communicate with. Here my parents weren’t cultural tourists like they were in the hearing world which was a place they never really belonged, where they were never really sure of the customs and where they were always searching for clues about a culture that weren’t written down but just learned by being hearing.

When our green and white Ford came over the rise of freshly mowed fields of the school there were dozens of people, all Deaf, waving and hugging us in the warm, summer sun and I watched my parents become the center of many attentions. My parents and their friends were always on “Deaf time” which meant they came early and left late. They came early because it was their one chance to connect with their tribe and at the end of the night their hands lingered on every last moment that they had to talk and be understood.

I can still hear the familiar other-worldly hum of Deaf voices and laughter that bounced through the air. Mothers with pretty lipstick would stop us to feed us bits of chicken as we raced an obstacle course with a hard-boiled egg on a spoon. And I spelled out my name, A-R-L-E-N-E, letter by letter, with my little girl fingers, showing off to the delight and admiration of the adults. And though I knew it wasn’t polite to “eyedrop” which is the Deaf version of eavesdropping, I could never resist watching all those adult hands unfurling like flags in the wind carrying stories and joys, gossip and sadnesses, empathy, advice and support.

When Daddy took us into the cool, dark halls of the school building, pointing out the trophies that he had won as an athlete my pride spilled even though I knew each story by heart. A small group gathered to watch him talk about the 1939 National Championship basketball game when his team traveled three exhilarating days by bus to the Illinois School for the Deaf. His eyes became wet while telling us that the Deaf school from Mississippi refused to play on a court with Trenton’s two black boys.

“They had to sit on the bench but we played harder and won 25–21” he signed

His chest puffed as he gave the play-by-play of the last quarter when they battled point for point against the heavily favored hometown school, feeling the vibrations of hundreds of stamping feet in the stands. And he cried again as he told us about coming home to cheering classmates who flanked the long tree-lined road and being given the day off to celebrate. This was his house and we felt special to claim him as our own.

I have a memory of pollen scented air and running down a hill to throw my arms around my father’s waist from behind only to realize that it was not my father at all just an unrecognizable face wearing the same kind of khaki pants. At first, the face looked surprised and then laughing, he pointed across a wide playground where my mother was sitting on a blue blanket under some shady trees. Then his outstretched palm moved downward from his chin; the sign for “good.”

“Have you been a good girl?” he signed with a smile.

When my folded hand bobbed up and down in response and he pulled a quarter out of his pocket for ice cream. In the Deaf world, they were all our parents.

In the hearing world, these were the people who went to jobs in hearing factories, print shops and filing rooms working silently with their heads down until they punched the time clock. They shopped in hearing stores handing their deli lists to the counter clerks and worshipped in hearing churches where they wrote their sins down on a piece of paper slid them under the confessional door and waited for the priest to write their penance and slide it back out. Even in the homes that they grew up in most of their families couldn’t communicate beyond a gesture or a home sign or a note.

On Alumni Day, all of us hearing kids didn’t have to interpret or make phone calls or explain our parents’ Deafness, we just got to scream our heads off and never had to worry about someone saying “shhh, be quiet” because we knew they couldn’t hear us. I remember swinging just before dusk next to a boy wearing a shirt made dirty from a day of hard play, our feet pumping up and down past the horizon. Coaxed by my mother who was carrying my sleeping sister, I sailed off.

“See you next year!” I yelled because I knew we would be back. We always came back.

I have memorized, my parents signing hands flickering above the lights of the dashboard as they talked about the day, moving their palms along their chest upwards from their hearts to say “happy.” Hooking their index fingers together to express the words “friends” and poking their chin with an index finger to say “I miss.” I would stare out at the night sky to keep an eye out for those three stars in a row from Orions Belt which I still believe follow me for protection.

All of these memories have become my Madeleine to call back every happiness of my little girl life. I don’t know if these remembrances were from one Alumni day or the best of a dozen days sifted into one endless, dreamy loop. All I know is that when we were there, the people around us became our mirrors; what we saw in their Deaf faces when they looked at us would become who we were.

I know that those small moments became bigger than any hurt or slight or feeling of inadequacy that Mommy and Daddy might have felt outside in the hearing world and that Alumni Day at The New Jersey School for the Deaf sustained us all. It reminded us that my parents weren’t broken people who needed to be fixed. Even then, I understood that this place made my father into the strong Deaf man that he was. Someone who was proud to have a good-paying Union job, a beautiful Deaf wife, his own home and children. This was the space where we were seen, understood and honored.

When I unwrap these memories one-by-one as I so often do, my fingers tingle, I sigh a happy sign and my heart titters at the slow-motion perfection of it all. And always these moments are followed by the single thought that I have had such a lucky, lucky life sitting in the center of a Deaf world that loved me, listened to me and took care of me.