As always my family took off after Christmas for an annual trek to Gatlinburg, TN. We only go down for a few days but it's fun. The mountains capped in snow just seem to call to me. The streams and creek that run icy cold while normally the air is warm, warm enough that the ducks and geese don't bother with flying south for the winter. Of course there is also the light display that is beautiful to see. My mother goes for the after Christmas bargains while I go just to get away from the stress of my life.
I guess to the outsider and maybe even an insider my life should be stress free but it's not. I don't have a job so making ends meet on disability can be an adventure. I run several support groups that I take my job as moderator quite seriously. Then there is the stress of school. There is the stress of trying to be there as a friend for Emily and Jane and Cherry and everyone else. Add on the stress of trying to walk a very narrow rope between two very different worlds and not feeling like you belong in either one. I'm always worrying, always thinking about how my actions affect others. So while my life should seem simplistic to those around me it is far from it. For this reason alone I always am in need of my mini-vacation after Christmas.
Cherry and my cousin Carrie went with my parents and I on this trek. My tongue was continually tied between trying to say Carrie and Cherry. I got so that I would use Cherry's name sign in conjunction with her name so that if somehow I managed to screw up and say the wrong name I was covered.
We had a ball roaming the streets of Gatlinburg. We'd walk down off the mountain from the Laurel Spring Condominium (funny how I never associated that name until now) to the main street. There we visited Ripley's Believe It or Not, the Haunted Mansion, took the cable car up the mountain to Ober Gatlinburg and shopped while looking down into the valley at the city below. Another day we drove across the Smokey Mountain National Park into Cherokee, North Carolina where we strolled through stores that sold authentic Indian motif and apparel. We also visited the black bears in one of the holding pens. It made me sad to see them there, they should have been holed up in some cave fast asleep instead of display in an unnatural environment. They deserved their freedom but I suppose that after so many years of being in captivity they'd have no idea how to behave, as bears should in the wild.
Yet another day we went with my parents through the back roads over to Townsend, TN. There is a really cool Christmas shop there and several art galleries. But the trip is what makes it worthwhile, the mountains rising on either side of a winding road through the country. The way back can be different than the way there and we took the other road that leads through Cade's Cove. Cade's Cove is an early mountain settlement from the 1800's. It is a lot like the pioneer village that Cherry and I visited the time we went to the country fair minus the buck rabbits that like to pee on unsuspecting fair goers.
On the last day we took the Laurel Falls trail and hiked up through the woods to see natures grand display. The trail itself is not hard to handle. It's paved and has a gradual incline. But short dumpy people like myself will probably get winded as I did. But at least when I needed to take a break I could point out the indigenous wildflowers like lady slippers and trillium. I pointed out the trees growing beside the trail as being Dog wood, Ironwood, maple, pine, fir and oak. Of course most of these things were minus their spring beauty of blooms but they were still recognizable as the flowering plants that I knew. We also passed mountain laurels and rhododendron shrubs that hold onto their foliage through winter. As we climbed the winding trail we could look out down at the valley below at times and wander at the Lord's majesty. Only a higher power, be it God as Christians know him or some other deity, could create such splendor on earth. The Falls is only a little less than a mile and half from the trail head but well worth the short, well relatively short hike. It is a 75-foot high falls with 2 tiers. Between the tiers is a bridge that allows hikers during the spring, summer and early fall to cool their tootsies.
Cherry, Carrie and I sat on a large granite rock that jutted out near the edge of the trail and close enough to the falls that we could gaze upon its beauty as we ate a picnic lunch. The spray from the falls was cold but we wouldn't move for the world was on display before us. The falls is not a smooth drop. It is a gradual drop. The water flows over a steep incline of rocks that lend the falls its beauty. In the spring the mountain laurel blaze around it in their pink, white and read colors. Moss grows on the rocks and is fed by the spray from the water tumbling pell-mell to the stream below.
I was looking out over the falls when Cherry startled me with a surprising question, "Why do you use your voice in front of Emily?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well sometimes when we are alone with her, you will use your voice to speak to me instead of signing. Don't you feel this is disrespectful to her?"
"I don't mean it to be. Sometimes if she is busy doing something or not paying attention to me I know I have used my voice. It is not to leave her out of what I am saying but because I don't think she is going to notice anyway. Or maybe that I can't think of the words I need in sign to say what is on my mind. Can you give me an example of a time when I have done this?" I asked as Carrie watched us both transfixed but our conversation.
"Oh maybe about 2 - 3 weeks before the semester ended we had finished class. Earlier in the evening you had asked me to go to the store with you and I had agreed. But after class you asked me if I still wanted to go but before I answered I waved Emily down to ask her some questions about ASL Grammar. You had a question for her, too, I think. Anyway, she needed to read my lab work to understand my question. After she finished I turned to find the notes I had written to ask her my other questions. You then asked me what I was planning to do. I felt it was disrespectful of you to have voiced with Emily right there."
"Oh, I remember that night. I hadn't realized you were not finished. You turned away from me and I thought you were gathering your stuff. Emily's eye gaze had followed you so I quickly asked because I thought you were leaving if you were going with me to the store. Then you told Emily what I said and I was like "Why are you telling her?" because I was about to explain what I had said to her. I of course wasn't voicing out of disrespect just that I wanted to know something before you left and how to handle things if you did wish to still go with me to the store. I can't believe you'd think I would set out to purposely hurt Emily like that by keeping her in the dark. I'd hope she'd never let me do that. I'd hope if I ever made her feel uncomfortable that she'd say hey don't forget about me here, I deserve to know what is happening."
"You know how laid back Emily is? Unless she's really, really upset by something she's not going to say one word about it."
"Yes your right. You must realize that because I am, as Emily and Jane put it, hard of hearing or in truth small d deaf that I don't realize that if someone's back is turned they can still hear me talking if they are hearing. It's the same thing for Deaf and me. If they aren't looking at me I don't realize they know I am talking. I know this isn't really true since Emily does hear voices, she just can't make the voices change into words."
"But don't you think that because she can hear you talking she feels left out of the conversation? You know her language. You should use it so that she is included or at least tell her to wait while you voice and then explain what you said in voice to her."
"I guess it's not so cut and dry to me. Let's say I was with 2 other hearing people playing cards with a 4th person who was Deaf or deaf. And the other card players were talking over the table about the cards but not explaining to the Deaf person what they were saying, you bet your boots I'd feel that this was unfair to the Deaf person and I would do something about it. I'm not voicing to show that Deaf are at a disadvantage. I am voicing because I walk between two worlds."
"What do you mean?" Carrie asked before Cherry got the chance.
"Carrie you were with me that winter here when I was completely deaf. You know what it was like for me. From one day to the next I wouldn't know if I was going to wake up hearing voices and words again or if my world was going to be silent. Every time I started to grieve for my hearing it would return just enough to stop the grieving process and give me hope that maybe that time it wouldn't disappear again within days. Then it would and I would be shattered once again. I was isolated from every one I thought of as my friends. My own parents treated me at times with disdain and contempt because I was a burden to them and an embarrassment. If I talked my vocal tonality would rise so that I could hear my head voice but for the rest of the world it was sharp in pitch and very unpleasant to their ears. You know that the only real way I had to communicate were through lip-reading, notes and your sweet attempt at fingerspelling whole conversations.
"The whole episode left me afraid of being deaf. It was emotionally and mentally very difficult for me. A person not as strong as I am mightn't have survived what I survived because of it. And sometimes, yes I did question my life's worth because there was days I didn't feel I had a life worth living. When my hearing did return so that I was again helped by hearing aids I lived in constant fear that one morning I'd wake up and the roller coaster I had been living on would start all over again. For me being Deaf was a very traumatic experience. So I fight myself every day in learning about the Deaf World and Culture. I fight myself because by learning about this world I have to confront my biggest fear that I will again be faced with a world where there is nothing but silence.
"Don't misunderstand me. I do want to learn Sign Language. I want to learn about the Culture and I wanted to accept what learning the language and the culture mean but I continue to cling to the world that means safety to me. I cling to the hearing world because of the two it is not a world that hurt me as being deaf did. Somehow I have to find a way to take the hearing world and the deaf world and combine them so that I can live within both worlds. Knowing Jane, Emily, Nora, Iris from the bowling alley and all the people at the Deaf club has helped me to overcome many of my fears but I have a long way to go. My voicing is only a small attempt by my subconscious mind to hold on to what is safe to me."
"Wow, thanks for explaining that to me. It really helps to clarify some of my questions I had about why you did something's," Cherry stated very supportively.
"You also must remember that once my hearing did return I still lived my life almost as a hermit. I hid from the world. I was afraid to go out into it because it meant communicating and I feared not hearing what was said to me. I lived for 5 years almost entirely in silence. I did talk some but for days at a time there was no one for me to talk to besides my parents. Going to Wolf Lake forced me to come out of hibernation. It forced me to confront so many of my fears and my anger at being deaf to start with. But because I no longer am hiding, I will not and cannot suppress my voice again. I have to talk. All the words and thoughts that I had and kept only in my head now must tumble out. I can't stop them if I try I will become less human than I was before. I can't return to my hiding place unless I want to stop being human."
"I'm sorry you had to live through that."
"Don't be. I'm a better and stronger person because of it."
"Okay you two explain this all to me. I have no clue what all this means when you say don't voice if there is a Deaf person present," Carrie asked.
"It's not that you can't talk but be mindful that there may be people in a room that don't hear," Cherry said.
"Say if you go into a room and everyone is talking and you see a person off to the side looking lost but watching everything very intently. You probably are seeing someone who is hard of hearing or Deaf. If you know a Deaf person is in the room you should try and include them in what is being said. If you know any sign at all you should attempt to use it so that the Deaf person is not left out of the conversation. My problem is because I am deaf but oral and I use my voice it is like saying see I have this advantage over you. If I know a person is Deaf I should use sign with them, I should use the language that makes them included in what is going on around them, for me to use my voice when sign is the better option can be considered discourteous and disrespectful."
"But you weren't trying to be either. It's just not easy for you to let go of your comfort zone right?"
"Right. I think Emily is aware of how I feel and why I sometimes use my voice but other Deaf people may not be and may think I am being rude because I am voicing when I know sign. Emily uses her voice only if she is with an all-hearing crowd. If there are Deaf people, even one in the room, she will use only sign, because some Deaf people don't have the option to use their voice. In truth some Deaf don't want to be oral, their only language is sign language."
"Why wouldn't all Deaf people want to be oral?" Carrie asked.
"Do you think that every person should learn Japanese, or French just so they can talk to someone else that is Japanese or French? Why should Deaf people learn to be oral when they already have a perfectly good language? Your primary language is English; do you feel like you should be forced to learn a second language? What if learning that second language not only was forced upon you but also was extremely difficult for you to learn because you didn't have the ability to hear the sounds needed to make the words with your voice? It would be like how Japanese people do not have the ability to pronounce the English hard R sound. They don't hear the sound because in their language it doesn't exist. So as babies their auditory tonal processing never learned to hear the sound needed for them to understand the English hard R sound. Teaching oralism to a Deaf person would be about 100 times harder than teaching a Japanese person to pronounce the letter R with the hard R sound."
"When you put it that what and I understand what you mean. I guess I wouldn't want to be oral if it was forced upon me and extremely difficult under the best of circumstances," Carrie answered.
"By George she got it," I laughed before I turned to Cherry, "Thanks for pointing out to me that I am voicing when I shouldn't be. I'll have to try and watch that more closely."
"I hope I didn't hurt your feelings by asking."
"No, but it does make me think."
"It made me think too. I now know that if Matt does have a relationship with Emily I will have to try hard to always make sure she's included and that we don't leave her out. I think we have as a family failed you in doing that, Rachel. I know that you have to always be playing catch-up because we tend to leave you out of conversations."
"Yes, I have been left out but it's partly my fault because I never have asserted my right to being kept informed. You know this reminds me of something else that happened last year."
"I'll help you, Poohbear. I'll make sure if I am around that you know what is going on at all times. No one should have to feel as if they are not important enough to be included," Carrie replied calling me by her childhood nickname for me.
"What does this remind you of?" Cherry asked relacing her hiking boots.
"Last year Mom and Dad came up to Wolf Lake. They'd never met Jane so I wanted to introduce them. Mom kept talking to me and expecting me to interpret to Jane. Jane kept waving at mom to look at her when she spoke so Jane could read her lips. I kept saying, "Mom, look at her. She can't see your lips." But my mother wouldn't. She totally cut Jane out of existence as if Jane wasn't there by ignoring her presence. I felt so bad. My mother never bought a clue to the fact that she was being oppressive to Jane."
"Oh man. Jane was probably seeing multiple shades of red after that. She doesn't take it kindly when she is ignored."
"I know and to this day it bothers me. I sent an email to Jane and apologized for my mother's actions but Jane never replied. All I know is that I don't really want my mother near Jane again. She did better when I took Emily home with me last summer. But still I am mortified by my mother's actions."
"Knowing your mom she will never buy that clue," Cherry said.
"You know it. All I can do is try and be a better person than my mother is."
"You are Rachel. You are." Carrie said hugging my shoulders because I was on the verge of tears.
"Hey, we'd better go. It's getting colder and we have to pack yet," announced Cherry as she stood up and stretched.
"Yeah we'd better head down the trail," I replied glad to have been with my friends.