The Sign for Home

It was never an interpreter’s place to make a decision for the Deaf. Our job is to interpret the message well enough so that the Deaf can make decisions for themselves.

You would probably die without the hearing-sighted to assist you, and sometimes you absolutely hate them for that.

It's hard to change things when you are older after life has disappointed you. You become more afraid.

When we share with others the secrets hidden inside us, this - THIS- is what saves us.

When people lie, they take away your ability to make a real decision. They take away your ability to be happy.

That’s why the ADA law needs to be amended so every DeafBlind person can have access to the world, including orientation and mobility training, Protactile training, and the right to co-navigator services every week. Access must be considered a human right.

Being pushed around was bad enough but being pushed around when you can’t see anything at all is the worst thing ever.

After all, the vast majority of humanity only has the most casual of relationships with the meanings of words. Linguistic one-night stands.

knowing the world is less about whether you can see and hear and more about the intensity of your curiosity and intelligence.

How can you remember just some secrets but forget the rest? How can you select only certain parts of the air to breathe?

Suddenly you are a Deafblind spaceman who left a very quiet planet a long time ago and are just arriving back on Earth, in a classroom, surrounded by a crowd of noisy people.

Home went from being a place where you eat and sleep to the place where someone loves you.

I immediately recognized the familiar grammatical errors of a Deaf person who struggles with English: tenses a mess, incorrect use of prepositions, defaulting to ASL structure, etc. It is pretty common for Deaf folks who didn’t have access to proper sign language (or any language) until they started school.

One of the weirder aspects of the interpreting business is that it is, for the most part, composed of four discrete groups: children of Deaf adults (known as CODAs), brainy progressive women, overly zealous religious folks, and finally, queers like me.

This is what it’s like to be a DeafBlind man with Usher syndrome type 1. You would probably die without the hearing-sighted to assist you, and sometimes you absolutely hate them for that.

Rule number one of being a successful DeafBlind person: BE NICE ALL THE TIME.

English is just not your first language. American Sign Language is. Writing in a language that you’ve literally never heard is like battling monsters with your hands tied behind your back. No matter how much you try to butt them with your head, they keep knocking you down.

Molly once told you the sign for home was originally a combination of the signs for food (bring your hand to your mouth, fingers closed, as if you were putting food in your mouth) and bed (hands in prayer position lifted to the side of the head as if you were sleeping on them). Home was the place you ate and slept. That old sign was like your previous homes. But ASL signs evolve, often foreshortening or migrating on the body for ease of use. Frequently they will be replaced by a brand-new sign altogether. Today, the sign for home is done by gathering the fingertips, but instead of bringing them to the mouth as before, the signer just touches the side of the chin and then, keeping the same hand shape, touches the top of the cheekbone. The funny thing is that same hand shape (the gathered fingers touching your face or body) is almost exactly like the sign for kiss. So the sign for home is like someone kissing your twice, once near the mouth and once on your cheek just below your eye. Home went from being a place where you eat and sleep to the place where someone loves you. You take your fingers and make the sign for home on Shri's face. Home.

We are who we are, and we understand the world based on our experiences, circumstances, and senses.

The hearing-sighted often try to control our access to the world. Either like my parents did, by not telling me I was going blind, or the way our government does by not giving all DeafBlind free access to SSP's or requiring that all parents of Deaf and DeafBlind babies learn sign language immediately, so they have a common language with their child. In my opinion, without mandated access, the world is being stolen from us.

The old girl looks up at me with those big brown service dog eyes as if to say: "You have no idea what you're doing with the rest of your life, do you?" "No, Snap. In fact, I don't. Any ideas?

They probably know, just like I do, that our freedom is precarious and everything still might fall apart. It could, right? In real life, things don't end so happily, right? But, at the moment, we are just moving forward, swinging our white cane right, then left, dodging obstacles, taking one more step, finding our way.

Truly knowing the world is less about whether you can see and hear and more about the intensity of your curiosity and intelligence.

Everyone, sighted-hearing, able bodied or not- we all need tools to live. That's why the ADA law needs to be amended so every DeafBlind person can have access to the world, including orientation and mobility training, Protactile training, and the right to co-navigator services every week. Access must be considered a human right.

I would have looked at everything more deeply. I would have taken it all in... everything. I would have eaten life with my eyes.

Sometimes words are like old sticky candy left in your pocket. They have so many things stuck to them, like old stories and lint, that they have a different taste from the one they are supposed to have.

You searched across an old photo of your mother like it was a map of the world, focusing in on the ocean of her eyes, the mountain of her nose, the soft valley of her mouth. You puzzled her face together, then carved it into your brain to save forever.