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.

Argentine Journal — The Constant Educator

Have you ever been disappointed that no one knows about cueing, about Cued Speech’s design as an ideal tool in overcoming deaf illiteracy?

I was at a friend’s son’s Bar Mitzvah last weekend (I have just loved saying that phrase; such joy to use a double possessive). In a quieter moment, it was revealed through our conversation about Ben being deaf, and my friend’s relatives proceeded to ask questions. Can he hear? Is he mainstreamed? Does he sign? Wears what aids?

The Cued Speech conversation: “System designed to help deaf children learn to read and write, by conveying the spoken language in a visual form, and that visual form providing the ‘phonics’ of the spoken language, called ‘phonemes’ … The hybrid, using a manual system (like signing) but conveying the oral language (so really an oral approach). The genius of Dr. Cornet’s system — whatever looks alike on the mouth is cued differently; whatever is cued the same looks different. No ambiguity.” The Constant Educator.

And we haven’t even talked about the implant!

I truly welcome the questions, and love to talk about Ben; cueing; cochlear implants; the differences between oral, sign, and cueing; social adjustments; reactions of Maddie as a hearing sibling.

I have no expectations that people would know of cueing. What people know of deafness is usually mixed up with signing. So something other than signing, especially a system that uses the hands, is pure puzzlement to most people.

So while I sometimes have a tinge of disappointment that cueing is so under the radar, it provides a great opportunity for awareness and teaching.

Deafness is Ben’s story, his identity. The story of his parents and sister, his extended family. Cueing is part of Ben’s deafness. The cochlear implant is part of his deafness. Because cueing is our history, the now and future is literacy, Ben’s ability to read and write, to learn independently.

– Never heard of Cued Speech?
– Well, do a have a few minutes?
– Excellent, because I have a great story to tell.
– It is about a young boy — a human story full of drama and inspiration.
– My connection to the story?
– The Constant Educator, of course.

Argentine Journal (Fragments)

Refracted thoughts on Argentina, communication, empathy for Ben and his deafness:

(1) Can you ever really blend in when you are an outsider? Should you?

In the first day or two of our journey to Argentina, my daughter Maddie seemed oddly out of sorts when I cued to my son Ben, especially in restaurants or stores. She wanted us only to speak in Spanish, but that was impossible for Ben (and probably me too). I spoke with her in Spanish and cued English to Ben. But even when out of earshot of locals, Maddie seemed annoyed with my cueing to Ben. I soon realized that Maddie wanted to blend into the scene, and the cues were attracting attention and identfying us as “outsiders.”

I argued for using travel “judo,” and turning the situation around. Not being embarassed or awkward, but acknowledging your status and all it entails, and approaching situations with curiousity and goodwill. After all, although we were tourists, we were clearly curious and bold enough to visit, we knew the language and customs, and, on an economic level, we were spending money. Looked at this way, shouldn’t we be proud of our status? Weren’t we the intriguing tourists, Americans hearing and deaf, able to speak English and Spanish?

While the cues identified us as “not-from-here,” the cues enhanced our uniqueness as indomitable travellers. Why blend, when our difference is a source of pride?

(2) The butterfly effect?

Before heading to Buenos Aires, I had looked up the Spanish version of cued speech, called “La Palabra Complementada” and downloaded a Spanish language description from the web site of the University of Malaga, Spain, www.uma.es/moc (you can also find the web site via links at the National Cued Speech Association web site, www.cuedspeech.org). At the celebration of the 40th anniversary of cued speech in 2006, I had met the Spanish professors who have instituted cued speech in Spain, so knew something was out there. I read through the description so I could give it a whirl if it came up in conversation, and printed out the description just in case.

Arriving from the airport, we met the rental company representative and the actual owner of the apartment. I explained as best I could that we were not using a sign language but were instead using a communication system based on spoken language (I couldn’t lay my hands on the paper). Both listened politely, but the owner clearly did not grasp it.

On our last day, the owner came to check us out of the apartment (and return our deposit). She said that her daughter’s day care used some signs as part of its approach, and asked again about cued speech. I again described the concept of cueing and had, by then, found the printout describing cued speech in Spanish, the system of cues and its relation to the spoken language. She asked if she could keep the description; por supuesto, I replied.

One person in Buenos Aires, who might read the article and might bring it to her daughter’s preschool, and might discuss it with a teacher or administrator. Or maybe she only reads the article, and infrequently recalls our visit, and our cueing. Could her reading, her discussion, her memory of Ben, cause some educational butterfly effect? Could the beatings of our cueing wings, so to speak, cause a tornado of deaf communication in Argentina?

Not at all likely, I know. But sometimes I like to dream. And in the dream I see the butterfly effect of our cueing visit, and I cue to my courageous deaf son, “Can you believe it?”