Graduating Thoughts — Is Forever Enough?

There was a celebration Sunday, and I had to say a few words.  Foolishly, I was unprepared.

Sunday we had a grand party for Ben, a celebration of his graduation from high school.  My father, and all three of my brothers and family, attended.  W, Ben’s mom, had her mother and her three sisters in town for the affair.  Various players from Ben’s academic life — transliterator, DHOH and regular teachers, auditory specialist, tutor — showed up, much to our delight. Ben’s friends and their families were on hand.  Personal friends of mine joined us to share food and drink, reveling in the moment.

That point came in the celebration, as it does in many of life’s moments, when an acknowledgement of the event and its importance to those attending must occur.  Time for a quieting of the crowd, and for someone to say something.  Foolishly, I was unprepared.

Nonetheless, as host with Ben’s mother, we three stood apart and gathered every one’s attention.  Cueing and asking others to cue to some of the deaf guests, I welcomed and thanked all attendees, singling out special people, including the families on both sides, the great education professionals/supporters, and other dear friends.  It was heartfelt, but feel it was not too articulate.  I should have focused on the incredible journey Ben’s made, and the amazing distance he’s traveled in that journey.

The journey from the early traumatic days of his sudden hearing loss at three and half years old, hearing aids and the controversies and choices in deafness.  Quickly identifying the fundamental appeal of Cued Speech — literacy — and deciding that value was dominant.  Learning to cue, attending pre-school events, sending Ben at the age of four on a 45 minute ride to his school!  Eventually deciding on the cochlear implant, committing to the rehabilitation and testing to make it so effective.  Meeting Dr. Cornett, and spending time with the man who invented the literacy system of cueing.  The support and amazing skills of the Montgomery County DHOH professionals, from speech and classroom teachers to transliterators to parent support.  The journey from separate DHOH classroom for pre-school, to mainstreamed with support at the school with cueing, then totally mainstreamed (with transliterators and support) at our local elementary, middle, and high school.

None of this journey did I mention.  I should have been ready for the moment, but somehow in the swirl of the details of the party, it got away from me.  Foolishly, I was unprepared.

Today, running through the woods, rewinding the grand event, I was listening to music.  A song by the Dixie Chicks, Lullaby, struck me.  While it would not have captured the details of Ben’s amazing journey, the lyrics from that song, about a parent’s love of a newborn child, would have captured the essence of what I’d wished I’d said:

They didn’t have you where I come from
Never knew the best was yet to come
Life began when I saw your face
And I hear your laugh like a serenade

How long do you want to be loved?
Is forever enough, is forever enough?
How long do you want to be loved?
Is forever enough?
Cause I’m never, never giving you up

In some sense, life began when I saw Ben’s face.  And a unique life began when Ben lost his hearing.

I’m never, never giving him up.  Nor giving up on him.

How long will Ben be loved?

Is forever enough?  Is forever enough?

Random Questions

Weeks drift by, the screen remains blank.  Where are the words?  What do you want to articulate?  What does it have to do with cueing?

Should I talk of modeling romantic love as a single parent to my teenage youth, about to become ensnared in love’s confusions and passions?  Of Cafe Lady, a woman I have known for years, but only dated a brief period, ending with an odd abruptness?  Of the pain from the ending, the reemergence in my consciousness of absence, how I rue that I  have no one to share my life with?

Ben and Maddie have also known Cafe Lady for years, and we three enjoyed time spent with her while we were dating. They accept the end of the relationship, knowing that’s how things go, understanding that its ending is no reflection on them, knowing that among Cafe Lady’s many charms is a quality of warmth that maintains affection for them, only now from afar.  I do my best to be transparent with them, admitting to missing Cafe Lady and speaking of adventures we shared.  But I am very aware that it is not fair to burden them with all my emotional reactions to its ending, of the possibility that love had come to me?  And that love has eluded me?

So Cafe Lady has come and gone, and we three continue together.  Is there a lesson?  Or merely an experience?  One day we will have to fold new people into our lives, and my time with Cafe Lady (and her family) was perhaps a rehearsal for a show that one day I hope we can produce, each with another, and the others with us, in starring roles and supporting roles.

Should I write of future adventures, the trip Ben and I are soon taking to Rome?  Ben, my Latin scholar, the guy who knows all the Roman (and Greek) gods of mythology, jawing at me about the Republic and the Empire, heading together to the vibrant city on the Tiber.  A graduation present from me, a week in Rome, based in Trastevere.  Or should I mention my irritation that Ben has done no preparation for the visit, has not looked at a guide, has not suggested itineraries, not outlined possible adventures for the time in Rome, has not inquired into hours of museums and costs and days when closed, has not learned a single phrase in Italian?  Or how this specific lack of effort, or lack of imagination, or lack of curiosity about Rome seems to be too much a part of his general approach to the world?  And how that frustrates and worries me?

Should I acknowledge my concerns about a young man who seemingly never envisions his own future?  Is it a dearth of imagination on Ben’s part, an inability to articulate a way forward, or a complete denial of reality?  Is my role to push, pull, rant, encourage, hold the course?  Is this a parenting failure, or is Ben merely a late bloomer finding his way, with patience the best approach?  Should I indicate how fundamentally confident I am in my overall approach with Ben, but doubt keeps buffeting me as his maturation progress seems so minimal?

Here are random questions, from a man parenting a deaf son.  Will there ever be answers?  And, if so, will the answers generate more questions?

(PS  Many thanks for past comments!  Thanks for reading!)

Dream Girl

“You’re a good girl, you’re a wonderful sister, and you’re a sweetheart of a child.”

I bestowed this valedictory benediction on Maddie, my daughter, for years.  Gender specific, relationship specific, and then universal — girl, sister, child.

Maddie turned 15 yesterday, and time for me to sing her praises, not exclusively but especially as a sibling of a deaf brother.

At her birth, Ben had not yet lost his hearing to EVA, but would during 1995, within Maddie’s first year on earth.  But by the time Maddie was cognizant, she was bound to deafness — as part of our family, as part of her life experience, as part of her relationship with Ben, her older sibling.

I cannot recall each instance, it is so woven into our family, but many a time we must have told Maddie to tap or touch Ben, to get his attention, so we could cue to him.  We must have told Maddie to speak directly to Ben, face to face, so he could see her lips and expression.  We must have told Maddie to wait to talk, as Ben did not have his hearing aids or (later) his cochlear processor on.  We must have spoken and explained and elaborated upon an idea or theme to Ben — “red light,” which means we have to stop; “green light,” now we can go — with Maddie as captive audience, getting the repetition and explanation.  We turned on the captions of the TV, and have watched all videos and television for years with captions on, Maddie watching along with us. We attended open captioned movies, Maddie with Ben and me.

After the divorce, when we three traveled together, Maddie’s role was the more responsible back-up, based on her hearing.  Whether in New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Buenos Aires, or London, she was my assistant, aiding me in relaying information via cueing to Ben.

In the meantime, she got into and succeeded wonderfully in the Spanish immersion program, and is effectively fluent in Spanish (and of course American English).  She learned Cued Speech completely and fluently when she was six, joining the family at the Cue Camp Friendship many times, a teacher aide the last few camps.  She has learned to finger spell and knows some signs, and has joined Ben in the Deaf Access theatre troupe based in Bethesda, Maryland.  She reads broadly and above level.  She is dramatic and occasionally too sassy. She is an excellent athlete, making the junior varsity field hockey and basketball teams as a high school freshman.  She is poised and sensitive.  She is an all-American girl. She is Nancy Drew come to life!

Her relationship with Ben is sweet.  They have sibling friction, of course, but have a special love and kindness to each other.  They are physically and emotionally affectionate with each other.  They gang up on me, mocking and laughing at my ways, my goofiness.  On our travels, they have joined together as a unit, allowing me (and them!) some individual travel experience.  Because Maddie can cue, and can hear, I feel safe leaving Ben in Maddie’s care, while Maddie is in Ben’s care for purposes of protection and physical safety.

For me, luck permitted me to have a baby girl, to parent both genders in our two-gender species.  And with Maddie, fate permitted me the wondrous experience of parenting a deaf and a hearing child.  I have a unique angle on similarities and differences of boys and girls, of deaf and hearing children, of Ben and Maddie.  She provides contrast with Ben, making both better.  The contrast, boy and girl, deaf and hearing, inspires me to be a better parent, a better man.

With the divorce, Maddie has taken on the role of hostess, providing some of the warmth and graciousness that women bring to social gatherings.  As I have learned to cook and we have expanded our socializing, all three of us have improved our skills as hosts; Maddie has blossomed  as sous chef, Ben as front-of-the-house host and drinks man.  In all our adventures, she sparkles.  The theme of dads and their daughters, always prevalent in literature and life, applies equally to us.  The essence of the feminine in a baby girl, its charms and beauty, is transcendent.  And there is nothing like having some female think you are a hero; very good for us dads and our egos!

Deafness is a part of our lives; deafness is part of Maddie’s life, even though she hears.  Ben, her older sibling, is deaf. Ben uses Cued Speech, Ben has a cochlear implant.  Maddie knows how to cue; Maddie knows about batteries and infrastructure of a cochlear implant.  Maddie is hearing, but she hangs with the deaf, at the theatre or in our social events. She signs some, cues proficiently, speaks and reads well, speaks and understands a foreign language, is a scholar and athlete.

My valediction, spoken so many nights as I tucked her in, has come to pass.  Through love, effort, innate talent, luck, and lots of outside assistance, Maddie fulfilled the benediction. She is a great girl, a fantastic sister, and an elegant and delightful child.  Happy birthday to my favorite girl in all the world.  Happy birthday, Maddie!

Maddie Osborne

Under Exam — Failure or Needs Improvement?

High schoolers in our county are in the middle of first semester exams, a few taken on Friday but the rest looming this week.  Ben and Maddie are both preparing and studying.  I want to believe, but don’t really know, what or how much or how well they, but Ben especially, is doing.  If my parenting of Ben were under exam by some “parent council,” would I pass?

My laissez faire approach to Ben, leaving details aside and focusing on the core of the relationship (and, in truth, leaving the details to his mother), starts to look like neglect when Exams roll around.  My approach is to leave Ben to himself, to respect his privacy and his developing intelligence, to see to it that he is fundamentally at peace with himself.  But this lack-of-details approach leaves me knowing too little about Ben:  what are his grades, where will he apply to college, when will he apply to those colleges, what is he thinking of studying in college?  Ah, no worries, Duke, those are just details.  The broad form is moving forward.  But am I sure?

So the details of the form are not known, but I can answer with respect to substance?  Uh, no.  Is Ben happy, is he in love, is he baffled by romance and relationships; is he embarrassed by his deafness or is he proud of the uniqueness; does he like his own body; enjoy the cleverness of his mind, get moved by events in the world?  I can guess, or intuit, answers to some of these questions, but I honestly do not know.

Failure.  Maybe that’s my parenting grade.

In many ways, it is a fair assessment.  I have walked the perimeter of Ben’s self — emotions, mind, and body — establishing a cordon, shielding him as much as possible from the pain of outsiders, but know little of what’s going on inside the compound of his persona.  The natural tendency of a teen to withhold information and to be purposely opaque, combined with the inarticulateness of a male dealing with roiling emotions, explains some of my lack of knowledge.  He does not want me to know, and has trouble expressing himself.  But part is, I do not want to know, either.

I do not want to know because I will want to fix it and I cannot?  I do not want to know because I will see a lack in Ben that will reflect on me?  I do not want to know because it will wound me and I will lash out?  I do not want to know because the inchoate thoughts will scare me?  I do not want to know because then it will confirm my failings?

Yes to all, as brutal as that assessment is.

Can I still pass this parenting course?  Maybe, if love and effort, like homework and class participation, are counted in the grade.

I love the boy, in a ferocious way.  The ferocity is mis-directed too often in irritation and disappointment, but the love is constant.  In fitful and less than ideal ways, I listen to Ben, explain to him my ideas and feelings, expose him to adventures and culture, give him affection.  I cue always to him, proud of our special connection, proud of him.  Daily I fail, daily I try again.  Is it enough?

Love and effort.  Here’s hoping these two qualities change my parent grade from “Failure” to “Needs Improvement.”

Duke and Ben Osborne, June 2009

November Dates

Once upon a time in November, a boy was diagnosed as deaf.  That boy’s father gives thanks.

Dates in November are significant in my professional and personal life.

I just completed 20 years at my job, receiving a plaque from our government thanking me for “loyal and devoted service.”  My first day 20 years ago, a Monday, was the week of Thanksgiving; I was thankful to the government for employing me and providing a paid holiday the first week of work!

The day the government shut down in 1995, November 14, was the day Ben was formally diagnosed with severe to profound hearing loss in both ears.  I remember taking sick leave rather than going to work (where we were required to report only to be summarily  dismissed, as lack of funding had shut down all non-emergency services).

Instead of work that Monday, Wendy, Ben and I headed to Georgetown University Hospital for a scheduled auditory brain stem response (ABR) test, designed to tell us more about Ben’s apparent hearing loss.  We had been to the hospital the previous Friday, where hearing tests were attempted with Ben to provide an assessment.  No formal assessment was made, and the staff cleared the schedule so that we could have the ABR test on Monday, which required a mild sedative for Ben.  Curiously, we accepted the lack of assessment regarding whether Ben was deaf, although that was the reason we were at the hospital.  We accepted the inconclusiveness of it all — come back Monday when we can have a pure scientific evaluation, looking at the brain’s response to auditory stimuli rather than trying to get Ben to drop a block if he hears a sound.  I accepted because I was in denial.

The weird November weekend — emotionally vacillating from denial and hope to acknowledgement and no hope — passed, and we reported for the ABR test that shutdown Monday.  This time, post testing, there was no stalling by the staff as the results were clear:  your son is deaf!

Our beautiful boy, just three and half years old, was deaf!  Our boy, who two months earlier was clearly hearing (in a videotape he is responding to questions while not looking at the questioner), had moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss bilaterally.

The rest of that government shutdown week, many hours were spent crying.  I grieved  over how I assumed Ben’s life was to have been, which it was not going to be.

Ten days later, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Ben had a CAT scan at Children’s Hospital, which yielded an official diagnosis — enlarged vestibular aqueducts, formed in vitro, predisposing him to deafness within the first five years of life —  for all the good it did to attach a cause to the reality.

The world changed on that shutdown Monday, a portal to a new world opened up.

• Ben’s life was what it will be, not what it was going to be.

• The unarticulated but inherent assumptions about his future were not to be.  Vague dreams dissipated.

• Everything about his future was ours for articulation.   Dreams reconfigured.

• Communication was our necessity.

• Cueing was our (eventual) modality.

I followed Ben through that portal to a new world, a world which has profoundly shaped me.  I give my thanks daily for the joy of the physical Ben, and for who he is, the metaphysical Ben.  Deafness is just a part of his wonderful and special self.  I give thanks for the world of deafness.

The courage to be who I wanted to become.  It comes back to Ben, and his deafness.

Give thanks this special Thursday, and every day, for the beauty in the world around us and the love in our hearts.  May you too find the courage to be who you want to become.

To cue or not to cue. There is no question!

… To advise in parallel with Mr. Shakespeare, to that there is a question.  But the teacher assigned the homework, so I’ll give it a go.

Hamlet’s on the syllabus for Ben’s senior year. The students are going to study Polonius’ advice to his son Laertes.  Hamlet, Act I, Scene iii, Lines 59-80.

• Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportioned thought his act. (Lines 59-60)
• Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.  (Line 61)
• This above all: to thine ownself be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man. (Lines 78-80)

Our assignment — provide ten to fifteen most important pieces of advice for your child as he goes off next year to college.  My submission:

To my son, Ben

• Acknowledge differences.  Focus on what you have in common.
• Live for something beyond you.  Love those near you.
• Floss your teeth.  And drink lots of water.
• Sometimes it’s like sailing.  Tack back and forth; it is often wiser than moving straight ahead.
• Sometimes it’s like hiking.  Lean into the hill and keep moving; it is often effort that gets you to the summit.
• Understand that people are weird.  Distinguish those who are the good-hearted oddballs; use caution with all others.
• Celebrate your physicality.  The body is amazing.
• Trust your instincts.  Evil exists.
• Walk in nature.  Engage in physical play.
• Treat a woman as equal in commerce. Admire a woman as beautiful in life. Accept a woman as partner in love.
• Read a newspaper regularly.
• Be physically strong, intellectual open, and emotionally sensitive.
• Give thanks.
• Show compassion.

Dad

Happy Independence Day!

Greetings on the Fourth of July, the celebration of American Independence, the quintessential summer holiday. Salutations to all cuers, for providing our children with the gift of literacy and thus independence of learning.

About a half dozen years ago, I heard a lecture by Dr. Carol LaSasso, presenting on her paper co-authored with Dr. Melanie Metzger (see the NCSA web site for links to the paper), about the benefits of using Cued Speech to teach deaf children how to read. Both Ben’s mom and I had been drawn to cueing in a great way because of its focus on literacy. Dr. LaSasso laid out her research and its conclusion that Cued Speech was the best system to teach deaf children to read. She then observed the phrase I have since stolen and used without attribution for years: in order to learn independently, one has to be able to read.

Cued Speech is the best system to teach a deaf child to read, and thus cueing leads to ability of our deaf children to learn independently. No reliance on technology, interpreters, or intermediaries. Cueing, with its ability to show the phonemes of spoken language, and thus permit the de-coding of the written version of the spoken language, teaches deaf children to read. And with reading, our deaf children are always independent in learning. Access to the written word; literacy in action!

Proudly cue “Happy Independence Day!” For cuers, for our deaf children, this phrase is more than just a salutation for one day.

17 Again: Back to the Future of Cueing …

… or, how the past is the present and the future.

Two weeks ago, on May 2, Ben turned seventeen. Born just past noon on a bright Spring Saturday, he emerged a beautiful infant, and grew into an adorable toddler with blue eyes, curly golden hair, and a sweet disposition.

Although not yet manifested at birth and in these early years, Ben was born with enlarged vestibular aqueducts in his inner ears (see http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/eva.asp for specific information on this form of hearing loss). In layperson’s language, Ben was born with structural defects in his inner ears, formed in utero, which predisposed him to deafness. That predisposition emerged when he was about three and one-half years old.

At birth, I fell in love with my boy; it was love at first sight. As he grew from infancy to toddler-hood, my heart bubbled with joy, pride, and love. Another child, my precious girl Maddie, came into my life. I fell in love again. Later that year, Ben’s deafness became evident, and a diagnosis was given, for all the good it did to attach a label to the cause.

Ben’s birth set in motion a chain of events leading everywhere, in all kinds of directions, including deafness, Cued Speech, and a cochlear implant. A portal to a different world opened. A new format emerged. A new identity enveloped me at Ben’s birth, setting in motion a chain of events as a parent, a dad to a son (and later a daughter), a father to a deaf child (and later a hearing one), a cueing man.

Like the time-travel movies referenced in the title, our present is the past, and will be the future. Ben’s recent birthday was a celebration of the beginning of his journey on earth. Seventeen years later, our journey together is inextricably linked to deafness and cueing.

Ben is a deaf cuer; I am cueing dad. Our history is based on this reality; our future will make this reality our history. In the present, that’s something to celebrate!

London Calling

No, not the storied 1979 album by the glorious British punk band, The Clash. The real city — the Roman military encampment founded in 43 A.D., grown into one of the greatest capital cities the world — London, England. To Ben, Maddie, and me, it was London calling, and we spent Spring Break exploring the vibrant city on the Thames.

My big Ben face to face (to face to face, if you get the joke) with Big Ben. My princess-acting delight of a daughter in the company of the Queen and the royal court. This Duke acknowledging the courage and accomplishments of the Duke of Marlborough and the Duke of Wellington.

Based in Bloomsbury, we explored many of the museums in the city, with our faves being the British Imperial War Museum and its fantastic exhibits on World War I and World War II, the Natural History Museum and its cathedral-like Central Hall, and the British Museum, with the Elgin Marbles, Egyptian mummies, and the Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone is a stone slab bearing parallel inscriptions, which gave the world the key to the long-forgotten language of ancient Egypt. The first inscription is in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. The second is in demotic, the popular language of Egypt at that time when the stone was inscribed. At the bottom of the stone the same message is written again in Greek. By working from the Greek, the Rosetta Stone made possible the decipherment of ancient Egypitian hieroglyphics,

Remind you of Cued Speech and cueing? Decipherment? A key to language acquisition?

The figurative definition of Rosetta Stone is something that is a critical key to a process of decryption or translation of a difficult problem. The critical key to literacy in a language, the ability to read and write, is to understand the phonemes of the language (the sounds of the language). Making visual the spoken phonemes, cueing permits the decryption of the written language, providing deaf cuers with the critical key to understanding the written language.

One speaks a sentence. One cues the spoken sentence to the deaf child. The deaf child understands the sentence and can find the written version of that sentence. Or: the deaf child reads a written sentence. The deaf child uses the knowledge of cues to de-code the language. The deaf child can express by cues or voice the written sentence. The critical key to the process of translation? Cued Speech and cueing.

Cueing. The Rosetta Stone of literacy.

Argentine Journal — Fathers & Sons

Super Sunday? Absolutely! The shared bonds of man, his son, and his son’s son.

Yesterday I spoke with my 88-year old father in Florida, catching up with his weekend. The usual routines for him, attending church, breakfasting with friends, visiting my mother in the nursing home (stricken with Alzheimer’s). As American males, we naturally did a post mortem on the big game, the Super Bowl. We concurred that it turned out to be an entertaining and exciting game.

How had I spent the game, he asked?

Well … although the youngsters were not with me this week, I had invited Ben over to watch, as he would be relegated to the backup TV at his mother’s house.

Watching the game, I noticed the captions were behind, especially on some of the controversial moments. Ben asked me questions that the announcers were discussing or had just touched upon (was his knee down? was his arm moving forward, or was it a fumble?), but the captions lagged. I’d cue to him that the announcers were discussing it, and we’d wait the moment as the captions came through.

We two watched the rest of the game, including the very exciting fourth quarter, then I returned him to his mother’s house.

Similar to my father and me in years past, Ben and I shared the Super Bowl together, bonding over the game, eating lots of food, watching the ads.

With a twist: captions and cues were part of our experience, as they always are, as they always will be.

A Super Sunday? Absolutely! I spent the Super Bowl with my special son, Ben, as once upon a time my father spent the games with me. Hearing or deaf, the love of a father and son endures.