I was stomping my feet, trying to get Mom’s attention. The floor vibrated, and yet my mother didn’t turn around. My heels banged and banged against the floor, the reverberation ringing through my body, but somehow it still didn’t reach Mom. I couldn’t hold the contents of the fridge any longer. I tried, I really really did, but everything came tumbling down anyway, giving no thought to my efforts. The polished floor took the beating of all the contents I couldn’t hold back. And somehow, this is what seemed to get my mothers’ attention. We made eye contact as Mom’s brows furrowed. I sighed. This could have all been avoided if I could just call out to her.
I was a quiet girl. Friendly, caring, respectful, but kept mostly to myself. I was outgoing when I needed to be. People viewed me as one of them. And that’s what I liked, what I wanted. Until the truth came out. After people learned more about my childhood, my life, I wasn’t one of them anymore. I was different. To some, I was a rockstar. But I didn’t feel like that at all. In fact, I felt alone, more than anything in this world. Not many people understood what it was like to be me.
I hated this part. My heartbeat would accelerate and my palms would get sweaty. My voice would get lower. I always tried to laugh it off, tried to make it seem like it was just another thing about myself, my family. “My parents are deaf” is probably the most repeated phrase in my vernacular. In my twenty years of life, I had probably said or typed those same exact words a thousand times over, give or take a few. Mostly give. It really shouldn’t have been a big of a deal as I made it out to be. But it was. It was the biggest deal ever. And that was solely based on the fact that I grew up in a family who had tried to hide the disability of my parents.
How do you tell a child to not speak to their parents at a party, at a store, at someone’s house? How do you tell them to wait until they get home, to wait until no one is around, or to not make it obvious that they are communicating? It was wrong, so very wrong in many ways. Time and time again, I had been told by my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles, everyone who wasn’t my parents that I shouldn’t speak sign language in public. They made it seem like it was something to be embarrassed about, something to be shunned, something to be hidden. They didn’t care if I was four, or nine, or sixteen. At no age was I to use sign language in public to communicate with my parents. My parents. The ones who raised me to be friendly, caring, and respectful. The ones I owed my life to. My parents never fought the stigma. “Just do what they want,” they’d always say, “it’s easier that way.” They were used to this. And this is the reason I am the way that I am. The reason I kept to myself. The reason I had constantly felt judged. The reason I never wanted to tell anyone.
Growing up with deaf parents is so many things I can’t put into words. It is so insanely difficult, but it becomes something you learn to live with, it becomes a part of you. I grew up learning three languages: English, Russian, and American Sign Language. I spoke English with my brothers, Russian with my grandparents, and American Sign Language with my parents. We had a pretty weird family dynamic. Oftentimes, when I had to translate something that my grandparents said to my parents, my brain would switch from Russian to English to American Sign Language. I constantly thought in three languages. Sometimes whilst signing to my parents, I would voice what I was saying, but I would do so in Russian and English. I was speaking three languages in one sentence. My brain was programmed to think that way since I was a baby.
I remember one time my mom and I were waiting for the bus and we were signing to one another. As we were speaking, I heard a woman tell her son in Russian “Look, look at them.
They’re speaking with their hands.” My heart dropped. I hated attention. I made it a point to look at her. I would understand why some people thought that our way of communication was cool. It’s fine to be curious, to sneak a peek. But there were so many times when people would stop what they were doing and stare. They would gawk at us like we were animals, like we deserved them intruding on our lives. It always made me feel out of place.
Another time, we were shopping at the store and my mom said, “Excuse me,” to get past a woman. My mom didn’t have a sturdy voice, so I am not sure what the woman thought my mom had said, but she seemed to get upset for some reason.
“Excuse you?!” she yelled back. This was the worst. Why did the woman have to bring so much attention to the situation? “Sorry, she’s deaf” my brother had replied unbeknownst to my mom, and we walked on. But what exactly was there to apologize for? There were many times in which people have said rude and hateful comments about my parents, but I never translated it back to them. Why should I make them feel worse than they already did? I could go on and on about stories similar to these, stories that became a part of my day to day life. But they all come back to the same conclusion: we were different.
It always pains me to think that I can’t give my parents the life they deserve. They live in a world with no music, with no Siri to tell them what the weather is, with no thrill when fireworks go off, with no honking cars, ringing doorbells, crunching leaves, and with no anticipation to hear the thunder after they see the lightning. Every little thing we hear people take for granted, they spend their lives yearning for.
When we would spend our mornings at the beach, I’d sit under the sun with my eyes closed, red and orange spots being the only thing I was able to see. And then dad would tap me and ask “What do the waves sound like?” He always asked me that, and I never knew how to answer. I had always wished that I could tell him that it was the most beautiful sound. The noisy seagulls, the loud kids, the slap of a hand catching a football, the buckets clinking together to make a sand castle, the whistle of a lifeguard, and the airplane overhead made the beach that much more beautiful. But how does one begin to describe sound to someone that’s never heard one? One of the worst things as a child is to witness the struggles of your parents and not being able to do a damn thing about it.
Most often than not, I feel like I am living a double life. In one of these lives, I am the main character, I am living. The world revolves around Daniela. In the other life, however, I am just existing, I am just the voice for my parents. And by voice, I mean just that. I spoke to the doctor, I ordered the food, I bargained with the salesperson, I read through government documents, I did it all. Me me me. But none of it was for me. I was the bridge between my parents and the world. It was so exhausting. In a way, it feels as though I am their parent. What all of this has taught me, however, is that I am lucky to be able to give back to my parents the way they give to me. I am lucky to be able to help them in ways no one else could. I am lucky to have them in my life. I am lucky to be able to learn from all of the obstacles I’ve had to endure. And most of all, I am lucky to be different.
