Family

As a CODA, or a Child Of Deaf Adults, I’ve experienced a lot things in my life that were different from most others.

For one, a CODA is oftentimes responsible for their parents.

I was their door to the open world.

I had to interpret for them at the grocery store, at the bank, when running into friends on the street.

I was their hearing aid, their seeing-eye dog, their cane, their crutch.

My mother had endured a lot of abuse, growing up, as a default of her deafness.

She was treated like a maid in a surrogate family in which she was living with when she was attending a school for the deaf in Washington. She was subject to abuse by an discriminatory and controlling house-mother in an another boarding school for the deaf. She was not taught sign language until she was 18-years old, leaving her absent of language up until that age. She had the mentality of an 8-year old at 16.

As a result of this, she had a lot of communication skills that were missing. This would result in a lot of miscommunication, a lot of misunderstandings, and a lot of anger.

I felt responsible for her.

My parents divorced when I was 3 years old, as a result of a marriage that was based around my birth. It never should have happened, and thus, it didn’t work. I never really thought about my parents being divorced as a bad thing, I just accepted it for what it was, because I never really knew any different. This was just like my parent’s deafness. It was just how it was, nothing else was really different. It was just like living in a household with Korean parents, I would tell some people. “At home, you speak Korean, and outside, you speak English with your friends. That’s the same way with me. At home, I speak Sign Language, and outside, I speak English with my friends.”

I would chuckle sometimes at the fact that I could put English down as my second language on my SAT’s.

I learned ASL – American Sign Language, as a first language, before I could speak. People asked me how I learned how to speak, with two deaf parents, who had voices that were much different than people who could hear. I didn’t really have an answer for them. I truly didn’t know. I would just say: “TV, family, you know, that stuff.” But, my guess was just as good as theirs.

They say that if a child learns more than one language before a certain age, their brains develop better than others. I guess that’s true. People would always tell me that I was smart, “special,” perfect. Of course, I thought that they were out of their minds. How could anybody be “perfect”? That sounded preposterous to me. Of course, later in my life, I set out to prove them wrong.

Interpreting is an exhausting task. One time, I had invited my step-father, Mike Brinker, to a lecture by the college counselor at my high-school about applying to college. Since we could not find an interpreter for the event, I had to interpret for him. Afterwards, I was exhausted. I had to go home and lay down on the couch for a nap. I interpreted for almost two hours. Your hands get numb and your brain feels as though it is about to fall out of your head. You’re speaking two languages at once. English comes in, ASL comes out. In and out. In and out. In and out.

Interpreting is an arduous task. We could never find an interpreter, which would result in me taking the wheel. Apparently, interpreters are in high demand no matter where you go. It’s virtually impossible to find one sometimes. This was why I had to interpret for my parents so often.

It became emotionally taxing at times, functioning as buisness aid to my family instead as a member of it. There was one day, when my mother and step-father decided to take a sailing course so that they could learn how to use their new sail-boat. It was small, just 15 feet, but it was my mother’s dream to have one. Coincidentally, that day was the Gay Pride day parade in San Francisco. I had wanted to go so badly, but since my mother needed me to interpret, I begrudgingly agreed to go with her.

We arrived at the harbor, and waited for the instructor to meet us at his office. Finally, he arrived, and we entered to introduce ourselves. I walked in alongside my mother, and she proceeded to talk to the instructor with my aid. She introduced herself. “Hi, I’m Suzie Brinker. You’ll be teaching me and my husband, Mike to sail our boat. This is my interpreter, Lily Frazier-Ransom. She’ll be helping me understand you today during our lesson.”

He welcomed her to his class, and told her that he was excited to have her and was happy to teach her today. He turned to me. I shook his hand, cordially said “Hello, nice to meet you.” Amicable chit-chat. “Yes, thank you. I look forward to helping my mother learn how to sail her boat today.”

I realized that this was the first mention of any relation that I had with my mother besides as an employee.

We left the office, and went outside to meet up with my step-father, Mike. It was a beautiful day. Sunny, bright. The air was crisp and cool with that tinge of salt that sliced through your senses like ice on a new winter frost. It was my favourite feeling. It was so calming, having the water just inches beneath your feet as you stand on the wooden dock. You knew that there were enless rows of barnacles underneath the boards of the boardwalk, and fish swimming about sparingly beneath the boats. You could see the rocks of the levee descend down into the ocean. Although the harbor was not very deep, you knew that just a few meters out that the ocean dropped down to unimaginable depths, harboring who knows what deep below. That was the only thing that made me nervous about sailing. The uncontrolled feeling that you could be dropped into the dark ocean at any time, and become subject to the uncertainty of the deep waves and tides, and the life lurking beneath. That was the only thing that made me nervous.

Despite the peace and quietude of that morning, I was overcome with grief. Suddenly, instead of a daughter, I had become an “interpreter.” I was no longer even related to my own mother. Did she even care? Did she even realize what she was doing? Just because I was interpreting for her – helping her and setting aside my own wishes for that day just for her? Out of the goodness of my own heart? I didn’t care about the rewards, the cash that she offered to pay me that she often times would just forget about. My eyes began to swell up with tears. “No!” I thought to myself. “No! I won’t cry. I wont.” But I couldn’t stop it. As soon as we walked a few feet away from the office door, I burst into tears.

“what’s wrong?” my mother asked me.

“I don’t like that you called me your interpreter. Am I not your daughter? Have you forgotten about that? What’s wrong with you? I’m your daughter, not your interpreter!”

My mother saw my tears, and understood what I was talking about.

“Ok. I’m sorry. I won’t introduce you as my interpreter.”

Ok, great. We’ve got an agreement going on. But, it sounded llike a buisness decision.

My heart still throbbed within my chest. So, she said she was sorry. So, we made up. Things are fine, right? No. I’ve still held that moment inside myself ever since. It’s been years since it’s happened, but I take that as an example of the relatinoship that I had with my mother and step-father for so long. Yes, we were family. Yes, there was plenty of love to go around. But there were times, where my mother just did not think. She could not imagine, what she was doing to me. I was slowly losing my status of a daughter – and becoming a person who did her bidding. Who worked for her. I refuse to be a workhorse for my own mother. Not at all.

But, I still maintain a healthy relationship with her. I still hold my grudges. I still have the feeling that she dosen’t recognize the damage that has been done. I don’t think she will ever fully understand that love dosen’t always mean servitude.

Despite that servitude, I still know that deaf people around the world need services like that, and that I have a personal obligation to help them. It’s beyond myself, I’ve decided. I know I’ve been burned and scarred by a relationship that mildly disintegrated into sterility, but it’s made me recognize that there needs to be people to fill that role. I know now that I need to get out there, and become that interpreter that will fill the positions of so many CODA’s out there who are in the same position that I was in. it’s common, for CODA’s to do this for their parents. Its’ a huge responsibility. It’s common for them to feel burdened, that they have to grow up too fast.

I’ve decided that I want to become nationally certified as an interpreter for the deaf some day. They make a good amount of money. You can be paid upwards of $80.00 an hour. Many times, interpreters tag-team for long term events. I attended my step-sister Claudine’s graduation from UC Berkeley. She was graduating from the social-works department, and I was very proud of her. Coincidentally, she worked at the same hospital that I was born in, the San Francisco University Hospital, on Parnassus Street. I love that name… Parnassus… It sounds like porn asses. That always made me giggle. Regardless, two interpreters attended the event with my father and his girlfriend, Betty-Ann. They would switch off intermittently throughout the event. I assumed, to avoid exhaustion. I understand it well. You get tired, your mind becomes numb, and you begin to lose your ability to creatively interpret all of the words that you hear into ASL. I admired it. I wanted to do it myself. I thought of it as giving back to the deaf community.

They’re a strong headed bunch. Deaf people have an incredibly strong sense of community. Their identity is very decidedly “Deaf.” Their culture is refined, cultural, communicative, and empowered. If a deaf person’s identity is challenged, they rise up in protest, and personally defeat whoever was putting them down.

When the cochlear implant was introduced, the deaf community resisted the idea as if the medical world was trying to euthanize their deaf identity. My father has two of them. He just recently had his second one implanted this week, on September 19^th, 2007. It’s incredible. He’s told me that he can now tell the difference between jazz music and rock. He can hear the birds chirping outside his window in the morning. When he received his first implant, he told me that he had a hard time filtering out all the white noise that we can normally just ignore. When one of his dogs would walk by, clacking its nails on the hardwood floor, my father would clap his hands around his ears in annoyance. Little things like that would get to him. A pen scratching on paper, clicking of the remote control to the TV, the rustling of money in his wallet. He’s been able to accustom himself to these things now. But, now that he has two, who knows what depths his hearing will go to now. I’m excited, ecstatic. I love the progress that my father has made.

The deaf community was not always accepting of the cochlear implant, however. When it was first introduced, deaf people rose up in protest. When a deaf person would receive one, they would be shunned by the deaf community, as though they were a turncoat to their people. Eventually, they realized that it was not a way to delete the deaf way of living, but a way to help those who wanted to make their lives easier. Many parents gave them to their children when they were very young, so that they could grow up with an easier, more normal life. Cochlear implants were like a souped-up hearing aid, made to augment whatever was already there. My father is post-lingual deaf, which means he lost his hearing after he had already become able to understand and speak some words. This made him a better candidate to the cochlear implant. He was lucky; he received the surgery for free through his insurance, Kaiser Permanente. When a cochlear implant is introduced, a couple electrodes are inserted into the inner ear into the cochlea, where millions of little cilli live. The cilli normally vibrate with the vibrations created by the eardrum. These vibrations are read by a nerve connected to the ear, and then sent to the brain to be interpreted into an audio signal. With the cochlear implant, it naturally destroys any remaining hearing that the person has, in order to create a heightened form of artifical hearing. It is still a little bit tinny, or so my father says. But, it is already much better than your run-of the mill hearing aid. This cochlear implant, I believe, will be incredibly beneficial to deaf people around the world. Granted, not all deaf people want to hear. My mother, for example, has a hearing aid. She never uses it, however, because she dosen’t like the noise. She prefers to silence to the noise of the world. Much like my father, she probably was not able to filter out all the white noise, and so everything must have been very overwhelming for her.

I’m happy for the introduction of the cochlear implant. For one, it reduces the need for interpreters. Granted, these people need jobs, and need the money from those who need their servces, but again, the deaf community would feel much better with the ability to be self-reliant. And, it would save me from interpreting for my parents for free for a very long time.