Argentine Journal (Field Notes)

The effort of listening.  How travel to a foreign country, with a foreign language, generates empathy for Ben, my deaf son.

During our time in Buenos Aires we stayed in an apartment.  This provided us a perfect base of operations to unpack our gear, a kitchen for supplies and meal preparation, beds and baths for sleeping and washing.  And, I realized upon reflection, a respite from listening to and speaking in Spanish. 

Most late afternoons, after a long sortie out of the apartment for breakfast and lunch, exploring neighborhoods, walking and roaming the city, we would return exhausted.  I attributed the fatigue to our active agenda, and allowed time for us to take it easy, before moving to our evening plans.  Ben played his hand-held games, Maddie watched television, I consulted maps and guide books. 

As the days moved along, I saw that the active touring was not the only reason for our fatigue.  Thinking and listening and hearing and speaking and reading — all in Castellano (Argentine Spanish) — was exhausting!  The effort required to stay “in tune” to this different world, the concentration required, took so much out of us. 

I see parallels to deafness.  The inability to hear creates a barrier to understanding the spoken language.  Cueing, by providing a clear phoneme stream, lessens that barrier significantly.  But the deaf person still has to use so much energy and effort to stay in tune with the spoken language.  Likewise, in Argentina, Castellano was our communication barrier, and we were putting lots of energy and effort in trying to stay in tune with the spoken language. 

On the streets of Buenos Aires, through the prism of another language, my sensitivities to Ben and his deafness were fine tuned.