My Coda friend part 1
Inspired by Gloria’s stories as a Coda, a child of deaf adults, I want to write about a friend of mine who was a Coda: Lauren. I first met Lauren in junior high. We’d grown up going to different elementary schools, she to Brinckerhoff, and I to Fishkill Elementary. Both schools pooled into Van Wyck Junior High and then to John Jay. She was a hearing child of deaf adults, along with her older brother Kent, 3 years our senior.
There are a variety of genetic pathways that influence a person to become deaf. Her father was born with a disease called porphyria. He was deaf and was also gradually losing his vision as time went on. Her mother did not have this disease but was born with some kind of deformity in her cochlea.
Kent was a social outcast, quiet, reticent. He also smoked a lot of pot and drove a Honda Civic. I thought he was super cool and kind of cute, too, but that would never happen.
Being the daughter of deaf parents, Lauren served as a go-between for them and the world. She was fluent in ASL and could interpret for them as needed. It bred in her a forthrightness and maturity that other kids didn’t have. She was inquisitive and intuitive and knew things about the world that I didn’t know. Her parents were still decent people. Her father had worked with computers at one point, but I’m not sure if he was still working at the time we knew each other, or if her parents had some sort of disability benefits.
Her parents were nominally religious. Her mother had been raised Roman Catholic, but they sometimes attended the United Methodist church down the street from her house, a little white country church, on what was once a farm, but now with sprawling suburbia growing up around it. But it was hard for her parents to find a real connection there, or anywhere. Like most deaf people, they were in their own world.
But that all changed when one day, some Jehovah’s Witnesses came around the neighborhood, sharing their beliefs in sign language. They began to talk to her dad and engage him in conversation. He eventually joined the JW’s. He stopped celebrating birthdays and wouldn’t eat with the family on holidays anymore.
Lauren was hurt and angry at her dad, and by this new cult that took him away from her family, even though he still lived under the same roof.
I sense the loneliness of her parents, especially the father, the way he so readily accepts the JW's -- and I suspect probably would not have if they had not been signing and reaching out to him in that special way.
ReplyDeleteLove that you're writing about this, thank you! Just as an aside - I also went to Van Wyck JHS. It's typical for the girl in the family to take on the interpreting role, we call that being "The Thumb"- the designated interpreter. And yes, even my mother said her kids had to grow up fast so of course your friend had a higher level of maturity for her age. I just asked Ron about the JW thing and he tells me they learn sign especially to get the deaf people to join, knowing that some are in isolated places where they are the only deaf at church. It's sad that her parents were so isolated and not in touch with a wider Deaf community. My parents never received disability - not sure when that started. "Coda" is fairly recent as a group - began in 1975
ReplyDeletewhoa! You mean VWJHS in Hopewell Junction?! That's crazy!
DeleteI noticed a typo at the end, he wouldn't eat *with* the family on holidays!
Oops, no! My JHS was located in Jamaica, Queens. Same name!!
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