Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love by Myron Uhlberg

Author:Myron Uhlberg [Uhlberg, Myron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Autobiography
ISBN: 0553806882
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2009-02-02T10:00:00+00:00

Irwin and I with our father at Coney Island

We kids sat on beach towels in the middle of the ever-expanding circle, like small animals in a human cage made up of our parents, beach chairs, and beach umbrellas, our protection against the possibility of getting lost. To be lost in Coney Island on a Sunday in August was a scary experience for any kid, but especially for a kid whose parents were deaf. When lost (an ever-present danger, since the beach was so crowded), the child would invariably be accosted by an adult sympathetic to the sight of a child crying his heart out, who would take him to the nearest lifeguard station. I say “him” because girls rarely wandered off and got lost in those days. There the lifeguard would ask the kid his name. Armed with that essential information, the lifeguard would dangle the kid over the railing of his elevated perch, while blowing his whistle in a series of ear-splitting screeches. In our case, of course, the whistle was useless, as the sound fell on what were literally deaf ears. We could only hope that our parents would eventually notice we were missing and maybe, just maybe, stop talking to their friends long enough to come looking for us.

By late afternoon, when the last of the arrivals had finally made it, having traveled by ferry and subway all the way from Staten Island, there were well over one hundred beach chairs in a perfect circle. A deaf man or woman occupied each chair. And each man or woman was signing frantically to another man or woman in the circle, sometimes to one clear across the circle, far away.

There were few secrets in the deaf community at Coney Island.

“What do the waves sound like?” my father asked me out of the blue. “I see them crashing onto the shore. They must make a sound.”

I was building a sand castle. The thick sand walls were water-dampened and -hardened. Three tall mud-dripped turrets stood atop a fantastic-looking structure adorned with battlements and scooped window openings. A bridge crossed a moat. And I was now sculpting small sand soldiers to guard the whole affair. I had no time to tell my father what things sounded like. I pretended I didn't see his hands.

He shook me, not too gently. “What do the waves sound like?” he repeated.

It was no use. Herewego again, I thought. “Loud,” I answered him without thinking. “Loud they must be,” he signed patiently, “but many things are loud. I feel loudness through the soles of my feet. But every loud thing must be loud in its own way.” He had me there.

“Well,” I sighed while signing, my shoulders lifting to signal that I was thinking, my features arranging themselves in an expression suggesting that I was not sure of my answer but would do the best I could.

“They sound wet when they crash down on the sand.”

As soon as I said that, I knew my father would ask what wet sounded like.

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