adapted and based on John Denver’s Lyrics to
“I Want To Live”
(Ch. 63 of my storyblog of my journey into Deafhood…)
I believe we are all Spirits put on this earth to have a human experience. I believe our Spirits are on a journey to find their way back home. I also believe we are given angels and sages and guides along our journey into Deafhood if we only recognize them.
Angels, helpers and guides come in many forms and at different times in our lives. I have had more than a few in my company along the stretch of my existence. Some passed briefly in and out of my days, while other were found living right along side of me, day in and day out.
(Ch. 51 of my storyblog of my journey into Deafhood…)
It was late and I was bleary-eyed from trying to lip-read Brent for hours. I finally acknowledged my communication limits and called it a night. If my hearing were normal, I would have had us lie back on the floor next to each other, and talk into the wee hours into the morning with our eyes closed. I used to do this on occasion, on the phone with my teenage friends while my parents slept.
It was the weekend of July 24th, 1982, the summer of my sophomore year in college. Bleary-eyed from endless eye-contact and weary from the ongoing communication struggles to lip-read, I looked forward to a well-deserved summer break. When my aunt extended an invitation, I jumped at the opportunity to join her and my younger cousins on a family camp-out at Fresno Dome. This was not my first trip to Fresno Dome. I had been there many times before with extended family, but this particular weekend would alter my life forever.
(Ch. 45 of my storyblog of my journey into Deafhood…)
My mother is truly the wind beneath my wings. She knew how hard it had been for me after I lost my hearing. She listened to my woes daily. In between college semesters, Mama decided to ask me to join her at a statewide Religious Education Conference in LA. The Catholic Church holds this grand, annual, weekend event to inspire, educate, and guide religious education volunteers and staff. My mother had been teaching CCD (Catholic religious education) classes for a year and thought it might be a good idea to get me involved as well. She knew my spirit needed tending. I accepted her invitation mostly because I was so hungry to be a part of a group again.
(Ch. 44 of my story of my journey into Deafhood…)
One afternoon, about 6 months after I had lost my hearing, a former choir classmate called me on the phone. Her name was Rachel, and I admired her greatly. She was an extremely talented musician and songwriter. She could play piano, pen tunes, and sing like nobody’s business!
By that time, I had exchanged our regular phone receiver for one with an amplifier on the handset to adjust the volume, but I still couldn’t hear well over the phone. I couldn’t wear my in-the-ear hearing aids while using the phone either because they would whistle with feedback when the receiver covered them. I had to take one of my hearing aids out and try using the phone amplifier at the highest volume, but speech was still too distorted for me to understand clearly without seeing the speaker’s lips. So Mama often got recruited to pick up the other phone from her room and bring it around to the one in the kitchen so she could orally interpret what the caller was saying.
Someone had bought me a new nightgown and robe to wear out to the car. I still had the hospital slippers on my feet, which were laid lightly on the wheelchair foot rests. The hot, dry, valley heat blasted me as I exited the hospital doors. The air was thick and heavy, not like the cool oxygen or temperature-controlled hospital air I had been breathing for 2 ½ weeks. My surroundings seemed so different. I felt like a newborn fresh out of the womb on her first drive home. Every sensation felt like a first.
