Coming Home

Amazing weekend. My cellphone was stolen, so I lost all of my numbers...now I have no emails and no numbers. Someone is trying to tell me something...and I'm listening. Luca and I saw each other for the first time in a long time and we still like what we see after so many intense and difficult years. Miraculous. We ate, shopped, drank, visited a museum, talked, shopped, talked, laughed...unbelievable. We shared my iPod as we walked, he had downloaded this Lenny Kravitz song for me...crazy beautiful.

As we were leaving the bed and breakfast, the owner shook our hands, nodded and said, "Thank you, come again!"
I smiled.

My First Published Article *smile*

Hi Everyone...I have a couple of things I want to blog about, but no time. Today is my husband's birthday - Happy Birthday, Honey!- and we've decided to go away...away...away for the weekend for the first time in eleven years - not kidding. Be back Monday (okay, maybe Sunday *smile*). Hmm. Two entire nights without children, wonder what we'll do. Think I'm going to have to hunt down something very little and inspiring..I just can't decide on the color.
Anyway, I diverge.
A couple of days ago, Karen told me she saw the article I had written for the Hands and Voices Publication "The Communicator." (If you've been following the blog, a lot of this is old news...but it is my first article published:))

As an American Mom thrilled to begin living in Tuscany, I disembarked the airplane wondering what new experiences, surprises and adventures awaited me. My mind painted scenes of an exciting life rich in cultural exploration, new language opportunities, romantic dinners with fine Italian wine and my ten month old child becoming bilingual in mine and my husband’s native tongues. One month later, the Italian-speaking Audiologist diagnosed Jordan with a profound bilateral sensori-neural hearing loss, immediately fitted him for hearing aids and we began a journey far richer than any I could have ever imagined. I did not speak a word of Italian, but I understood when they told me I could no longer speak English to my own son if I wanted him to acquire proficient language skills.

We lived in Italy, Italian would be our new language. We acquired language together during a long, frustrating, and tantrum-filled process for each of us on a different, yet similar level. I walked through the main street of the town surrounded by incomprehensible voices speaking jibber jabber that only slowly began to be intelligible when I could speak to people face to face and watch their mouths form the words as they spoke. Jordan wore his hearing aids and struggled to make sense out of the new sounds bombarding his ears, he learned to speech read quickly and learned new vocabulary words only after they had been repeated hundreds of times. Each of us determined in our own way, we began to learn to speak and understand Italian together.

Our audiologist and speech therapist both told me that I needed to speak Italian in our home as much as possible, which did become easier over time. Speaking a language different than my own to my son created a sort of communication wall, that was bridged by the incorporation of only one fundamental English sentence: “I love you.” I could go an entire day repeating speech therapy lessons, Italian idioms, sounds, etc including being called “Mamma” instead of “Mommy, “ as long as our day ended with “I love you, Mamma.” Words in our native language represent much more than the letters that compose them, connotation versus denotation and until you are truly “inside a language,” the words remain meaningless. Behind a language lies the culture, to fully comprehend the Italian language, we had to live the culture. I intentionally did not seek other Americans in Grosseto and found Italian friends.

These Italian friends all had children Jordan’s age, so I was able to incorporate social development with his language acquisition. I had playgroups in our home where I supervised his play and provided him with words he was lacking so that the other children could understand him and he would be less frustrated. When the kids played hide-and-go-seek outside, I shadowed Jordan to make sure he heard the counter say, “Ready or not, here I come!”

Discouraged by the fact that I could not speak English to my own son, yet unwilling to give up the possibility entirely, I invited four of his best friends to a weekly “English lesson” in my home. Jordan learned numbers, colors, some verbs and adjectives, nowhere near fluency, but a beginning. He did well with his hearing aids, however when he reached the second half of third grade, he began throwing temper tantrums because he couldn’t understand why his friends were laughing and could not hear well enough by phone to call a friend for homework by himself. We struggled during homework as he could not simultaneously hear my voice and read the page in front of him. My son, intelligent as he was, realized that he was becoming an outsider among his friends and this, to me was unacceptable. At this point, my husband and I decided to opt for the cochlear implant.

The cochlear implant has changed our lives. I hesitate to say the word “miracle” because Jordan’s success is obviously a product of years of intensive auditory-verbal therapy with hearing aids and a determined family circle, but the device itself is miraculous in that it reproduces sound in such a way that Jordan hears me upstairs when I call to him from downstairs. He no longer relies on speech-reading, talks on the phone, listens to his mp3 player and when playing hide-and-go-seek, he catches kids who count too fast or skip numbers… he hears. Last summer he attended a baseball camp in the USA with English-speaking children and by the end of the week was screaming, “I got it!” like a champ…incidental language. He speaks to my family in the USA by means of SKYPE and can understand what they say; even my sister said on our last visit that she is finally able to have a real conversation in English with her nephew. Jordan currently attends a middle school specializing in Music Education and studies the acoustic and electric guitar. He was recently voted Class Representative.

Have a great weekend!!!
*packing the stilettos*

Teachers and Students

HA! I woke up in a pink mood today *smile*...a woman reserves the right to change her mind, hair color and blog color at any given moment! I can be fickle like that...I haven't been in a while, but it's coming back. Last night I went to my Pilates class...NEVER,never take a pilates class while recovering from bronchitis, it's all about breathing, abs and glutes. I almost passed out, had a hacking cough attack and got some killer cramps in my abs, which miraculously I have found 28 pounds later...the glutes are another story - but a woman's gotta be soft somewhere lol.

I called my mom this morning and we had a long talk. My mom is an expert on certain things and she offered up some quality advice this morning...love you Mom. And so, everyone will suffer in pink.

My all-time favorite teacher was my twelfth grade English teacher Mr.Gray. I have never tried so hard to make a man laugh in my entire life - he was the kind of man who smiled with his eyes, yet hid his smile with his gray mustache. Adorable, especially to a 17 year old girl. He was the first teacher who gave me a "B" in English and I worked my ass off to get that final "A" as my end of the year grade. We remained in contact after high school, every now and then I would return to visit him and share some of the college experience. I remember once he told me that he would have loved to have written a book about how people come in and out of our lives and touch us in ways that we never could have imagined. One brief encounter and our lives are altered in some way.

I remember writing Mr. Gray a letter about a Literature of AIDS course I was taking and telling him about an experience that touched my life tremendously. My professor had given us an assignment to go to Washington D.C. to visit the AIDS Quilt that was spread across the mall...the Quilt was spread across an area comparable to that of 20 football fields, this was in 1994 or 5. Julie and I took the subway to D.C. from College Park, had lunch, went shopping and finally made our way over to the Washington Monument, where we saw and felt raw emotion. When we had arrived the day had been partly sunny, but now the clouds were looming. As we walked around the perimeters of each individual quilt, reading the names, hobbies, passions of those who had been taken by AIDS, a voice over a loudspeaker reading name after name after name of the people represented by those quilts accompanied us. Unless you have lived this experience, you just can't even imagine the sadness.

Julie and I didn't really speak, we would just look at each other every now and then, sometimes eye contact is enough. Then, we felt the first raindrops falling. The voice over the loudspeaker made the following announcement: "WE ARE GOING INTO AN EMERGENCY DOWNPOUR SITUATION, EVERYONE NEEDS TO FOLD A QUILT AND PLACE IT IN THE PLASTIC BAG THAT YOU WILL FIND UNDER THE QUILTS!" There were about five of us standing around one quilt, each of us reacted and we folded "our" quilt together, then we kind of looked at each other with adrenaline racing and an embarrassed smile. I turned my head to see what the others had done, I still get chills thinking about this...The entire AIDS quilt, 20 football fields long, had been placed in bags and all I could see was a bright green lawn dotted with plastic bags. Someone started clapping and everyone joined in under the torrential downpour until we were all clapping, whistling, cheering and soaking wet. Freaking unbelievably emotional moment - the kind of moment that gives you a new perspective on humanity and what we are capable of, not only as individuals, but as individuals working together.

Mr. Gray died of AIDS complications. I was in Italy and missed his funeral.

But, what he taught me about people coming in and out of our lives and the impact they leave is still with me. The impact can be negative, and we learn a lesson from that. Then again, there are those people who touch our lives in such a beautiful way that we are able to learn and grow.

In Aidan's blog, she wrote:
Giving birth to a child does not automatically mean that someone is competent to raise children, and people who have not given birth to children are also qualified to raise and care for children. People who have not given birth to a child can and do contribute a great deal to Deaf children's upbringing. It is not about measuring who is mother enough and who is not mother enough. People who have this kind of attitude who make negative comments are looking for a way to shut up the people who are passionate about children's futures.
I agree with this statement, and as a teacher, I have seen that many parents are not so great at raising their kids or identifying their needs. Each individual child is different and a good mother, like a good teacher, recognizes this fact.

Jean Boutcher's comment really disturbed me and I found the wording highly inflammatory:
This is a good example. The UNthinkable or "not smart" oralists learn to sneer from their audistic masters. The thinkable (intelligent) oralists do not sneer.

The idea of a teacher as an "audistic master" is tormenting for me to comprehend, yet Mishka and others..see Paotie's Blog have experienced this treatment to such a point as to use this term.

The job of a teacher is as delicate and should be as unconditional as that of a mother, any professional who works with children should be conscious of this privileged role.

Some people are born teachers while some people remain students their entire lives. There is a major difference between preaching and teaching. Learning is an ongoing process and true teachers recognize that they will always be students. I have been blessed to have had some exceptional teachers.

"Deafism evolved because of Audism"...Implications

It is just impossible to reflect on such depth in 40 minutes with my freaking messed-up head, you just can't even imagine what I'm going through in this period. I did just receive a miraculous letter from the Mayor of Grosseto who accepted my request for "Patrocinio" (not even sure what it means, but I think it's a good thing) for our book presentation sometime in April (no doubt it will be the 16th because all I see lately is 4-16 and 43)so now I have to mentally prepare to sound intelligent in front of a lot of people without breaking down. Should be interesting...but very exciting! And you can be sure that Jordan will be reading his letter to the reader!

*inhale*
*exhale*

Okay, of all of the comments I read and there were some major comments from the last post, what Jean Boutcher said, struck me the most:

Deafism evolved because of audism.

As a defense mechanism? As a demand for validation as deaf individuals? or as the assertion of a collective voice? Why was "Deafism" not present before Audism, because the idea of "Deafism" to me as a product of Audism gives me the impression that a Deaf person lives on the defensive as opposed to the offensive and needs validation of his/her existence.

If this is the case, I can understand why there is so much resentment, anger and closed-mindedness when a hearing person tries to convey a message with heart, not dictate. Living with the idea that my life is dictated to me, judged and found lacking is no way to live. So, yes, I can understand the resentment and anger, but living my life "expecting" that every hearing person or oral deaf individual I come into contact with is a potential audist creates a predisposition for mistrust...which I can understand, as well. I have great difficulty trusting people as I've already written. However, when you refuse to let yourself trust people, you miss out on a helluva lot of incredible people and the opportunity to enrich your life.

*Life ain't easy:)*

Reading your comments and various blogs has given me a deeper perspective on what exactly haunts the Deaf community and has led to such incredible sensitivity on one side yet anger, resentment and an unwillingness to trust on the other side.

KW left another one of her power comments:
Jodi, I haven't blogged about this in much detail because it hurts. I'm taking off to see my parents in a couple hours. My mother wouldn't even discuss my hearing loss for twenty-seven years. She still will not look at my audiograms. My parents still haven't grasped the extent of my deafness.
Mom did not want me to mention my hearing loss to other relatives for all that time. I had to pretend to hear around them. They all live out of state. I felt like she was ashamed of me, as if I made committed an embarrassing crime by becoming deaf.

A Deaf Pundit wrote:
For instance, I remember going into Best Buy with a deaf friend - (side note: he had a CI) but we could only lipread and speak minimally. So I gestured to the store clerk that he would have to write down stuff.
The clerk heaved a huge sigh, and it was very easy to lipread him saying, "I know..." and he was very rude with us. Looking back, I should've gotten the manager -that's how bad it was.

Gnarlydorkette shared an experience from her childhood and concluded with this...:
That last statement alone dashed my sense of being in an utopia. I thought I was normal until that wonderful yet nearsighted teacher snapped me into the reality that NOBODY sees me as a normal child. Really tragic.

Mishka, then shared an aspect of audism that I really hadn't understood even existed - I thought it completely had to do with hearing people's mistreatment of the Deaf. I read the definition but the oral deaf vs. signing deaf didn't really sink in (little thick of me) until this comment:
Superiority, based on my personal experiences as well as countless other oral deaf people. In the oral deaf settings, we were drilled endlessly how fortunate we were to be able to speak and hear (or lipread), unlike "those people" who use their hands. We were taught to look down on Deaf people as unfortunate and stupid people. Since I was indoctrinated in this audistic environment, I can spot it one mile away : /

*You guys deal with a lot of shit on a daily basis, I'm getting where the intensity level is coming from:)*

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Amy Cohen Effron left this comment:
Jodi, you said: "Are you sure that those oral attitudes are fueled by superiority and not guilt?"

Can you divulge what do you mean by guilty? Whose guilt? Guilty for not able to communicate with Deaf people? Or do you think it has to do with...

Fear of unknown?
Impatience?
Incompetence?
Disability phobia?
Guilty for not able to communicate?

I said "guilty" because I always have this experience in the back of my head...My first semester of college I worked at the Bagel Shop and oftentimes I had customers come up to the counter to order who were Deaf and signed. I COULD NOT COMMUNICATE WITH THEM! I felt guilty that I did not know ASL, so I smiled a lot, broke out the pen and paper and began writing. Then, my next semester and every semester thereafter I tried to fit in an ASL course with my other requirements. It never worked with my schedule. Guilt was MY reaction to not being able to communicate, which has to do with a feeling of incompetence at not being able to effectively communicate in ASL.

The idea of Disability Phobia (first time reading this term) is directly related to ignorance, the more we educate and spread awareness of Deaf Issues, approaches to deafness and of course *smile* the cochlear implant, the more people will realize that it's not necessary to scream in the ear of a person wearing a cochlear implant or hearing aids. If we give people the words they need to discuss issues in deafness, they will be more willing to discuss Deafness. Knowledge is power, we need to educate others with the assumption that they are willing to listen without being on the defensive. A comment left on Patti's blog really disturbed me. A very nice individual actually said something to the effect that she appreciated my apology because she liked my blog, but "wasn't sure she could trust me."

Am I really so threatening? If so, why?

(will add links later, gotta go to work, Wednesdays are killer)

Re: Ci Controversial, Why?

Delicately dipping my big toe in the freezing water...
*Brrrrrrr!*

60 posts later, I have finally taken the time to research the word "Audism."
To do so, I went straight to the About.com queen, Jamie Berke

I'm Better Than You
In the deaf culture, calling someone an audist is akin to calling someone a racist.
What is audism? A simple definition would be that it is a negative or oppressive attitude towards deaf people by either deaf or hearing people and organizations, and a failure to accomodate them. People who have audist attitudes are considered to be audists. For example, the refusal or failure to use sign language in the presence of a sign language-dependent person is considered audism.

According to an article in Capital D Magazine (vol. 1, issue 1) (now apparently defunct), Tom Humphries invented the word "audism" in 1975 to mean an attitude that people who hear and speak, or have good English are superior. This applies whether the person who hears and speaks is deaf or hearing.

*Hmmm*

The writer of this post says,
Think about it. What are advocating of CIs blogs about? Success stories. Oh, I can hear the lake! Oh, I can hear the crickets! Oh, I can hear music! Oh, I can hear the sounds of human voice! And the list goes on. Doesn’t it seem audistic to boast of hearing success as if being deaf is not so cool?

What if deaf individuals who have worked so hard in avt and in life in general are just proud to live their deaf experience with a ci and the "superiority aspect" of being fluent in the English Language has nothing to do with it? What if they are advocating "Choice" in the deaf experience by discussing the benefits of ci? If Rachel is here on deafread.com to interact in productive dialogue with individuals interested in her experience, is she an audist because she is willing to openly answer questions about her journey? Or is she an "audist" because her views conflict with those of readers?

She responds to criticism, reads it, listens and reflects...she is not an audist.

*Audism is in the eye of the beholder*

Jamie Berke has been so generously relating her Cochlear Implant Experience, this is what she shared earlier today:
On the way home, I found I could hear Bob's voice. At home, I even heard him laugh. At the grocery store, we were asking the pharmacist questions, and suddenly I realized I could hear the pharmacist's voice. On the way out of the store, talking to Bob, I heard something else that it took me a moment to realize what it was...my own voice.

I now suppose that Jamie Berke will be considered an "audist" for wanting a cochlear implant and being amazed that it actually works.

But, no...because your post interestingly incorporates two aspects in the equation, "...the linguistic perspective. Why? Because the AVT therapy’s sole purpose is to train CI implantees to speak what? English!" You continue by saying, "But when we Deaf are faced with this attitude that ASL is ok for somewhat successful deaf children but spoken English is a must for a successful deaf child to grow into the world, it rubs the Deaf people WRONG way!"

suc·cess (sk-ss)
n.
1. The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted: attributed their success in business to hard work.
2.
a. The gaining of fame or prosperity: an artist spoiled by success.
b. The extent of such gain.
3. One that is successful: The plan was a success.
4. Obsolete A result or an outcome.
*Success is not in the eye of the beholder, it is in the eye of the person who has desired, planned or attempted*

Do you measure your level of success based on how others see you or as how you see yourself? Really consider the answer to that question and you will begin to see Rachel as a twenty year old woman who sees herself as successful. This is why she is not an audist, just a person who has achieved something desired after working so hard for so many years, and that she wants to share this experience with others. Audism carries a component of hatred, just like racism...do you really feel that Rachel hates you?

Or do you feel judged?

You wrote:
"Now, if ASL was not dismissed by CI advocates as unnecessary, the story COULD be different."

Rachel does not dismiss ASL in general, it just does not have a part in what has been her experience until now.

You conclude with this:
It is up to you, CI advocates, to drop the dismissal attitude of ASL as an important part of d/Deaf people, not just because it is a culture thing but also because it facilitates their connection to the language expression!

No one has dismissed ASL as an important part of Deaf people and Rachel is a success story for me as the hearing mom of a deaf child with a cochlear implant...I will NOT allow her to be dismissed.

As seen on the Pediatric Cochlear Implant Circle, Learn2Hear and Listen-Up yahoo support groups, many parents of children who wear cochlear implants are incorporating the use of sign language with their AVTherapy. There is no written law regarding communication methods and the cochlear implant. Actually, ALL communication methods are accepted and welcomed on these groups.

Why are so many people having so much trouble accepting the Cochlear Implant as a tool in approaches to Deafness?

(Paotie...I know, this was not one of my sexy, fun-loving posts just not feelin' it today...*wink*)
PS. Mike McConnel's hitting the road and I for one am really sad about it...check out his farewell blog here.

Role-Playing

How many different people can one person possibly be during a 24-hour period? Feeling a sense of identity is very different from role-playing when you feel one of your identities evolving, especially when it is a core identity. Have you ever been in an emergency situation where your adrenaline races and you go into automatic pilot to "take on" the situation? Try being on automatic pilot for ten years only to find the emergency situation no longer exists...try returning to the person you were before flicking the "react" switch. Impossible. That person no longer exists aside from pieces.

Hmmm.

Role-playing can be fun *wink*

From the time we're little girls, we dress up as princesses, clink-clank around the house in our Mom's high heels, wear our Mom's stretchy gold tight pants for Halloween (with a lot of blue eyeshadow), play doctor with the cutest first grader in the basement of his house only to get caught by his mom(my first "doctor" actually became a cardiologist lol)...

Role-playing can be educational

Throughout college I was convinced that I wanted to become an attorney to help people. My last semester of the University, I had an internship with the State's Attorneys' Office in Rockville, MD where I assisted a really HOT attorney (nicknamed Clark Kent) who was also extremely nice...but I didn't see a lot of "helping" going on in criminal cases, just a lot of really bad people and frustrated lawyers. It was fun wearing suits to "work" every day, but it got old fast and I decided that "playing attorney" was not in my future.

I have done a lot of role-playing with Jordan to help him fight bullies, snag a girl, react or not react appropriately in different situations that require his voice, but the most painful and difficult experience for a mother is to divide that God-given job with that of teacher. A hearing mom who chooses to approach deafness orally, must become a teacher 24 hours a day, so that those two jobs - one natural and one artificial merge, creating an entirely different role as a mother. Obviously, a part of the "mother job" is to teach your child right from wrong. But the "teacher job" goes so way beyond the normal mother teaching that it destroys your equilibrium and blows you to pieces. Love is the only thing that holds it all together, that and knowing you are doing your best to help your child for his future.

I played the role of mother to a child with a disability and wife to a husband of a child with a disability so well that I eliminated the "woman" part of me. That "woman" part is back. Another "minor" issue is that the "American" part snuck back with her and I am walking around town feeling different. I've always been different, but now I'm feeling different. Role-playing is easy when you know who you are and don't get lost in the role. Once you get lost, finding yourself again can be quite the struggle.

The Fonz or Raoul Bova...Stereotypically Italian? -Part 1

(Still laughing after two days) I went back to work on Friday despite the fact that I sounded like a toad and was half-dead, much better than staying in the house. I "bravely" faced my pre-school beasts armed with "Home Alone" in Italian. The teacher was so happy to see me and have an hour break that she whipped that dvd player right out and went on her way. My middle school group...they killed me once again. This is how the scene went down...

Simone asks, "Jodi, what does 'Sexy' mean?" See, now that question kind of confused me because "sexy" is the same thing in Italian as it is in English. The other two in the group looked at him like he was crazy and it got worse, because the question was loaded. He's the one in the first year of high school and just got his motor scooter that he's obsessed with, that and girls. Apparently, he would like to put a sticker with the word "SEXY" on his motor scooter. Unacceptable. Tattooing the word "Sexy" on a motorbike is completely Anti-Sexy and NO student of mine will ever be considered UnSexy.

I tried to explain to him that a "sexy" person does not wear the word "sexy" across her chest. It's a question of ATTITUDE. "Sexy" is a label that OTHERS give YOU, you don't give it to yourself. I told him it was VERY cheesy. (do people still use that word? I've been out of the loop for so long...)

Try to explain "Cheesy" to Italians. When they say something in English, incorrectly, like when they use double negatives, I tell them they sound like 50 Cent...they "get" that. But "Cheesy" is Anti-Italian.
*This is Cheesy*
*This is a typical Italian woman* (Note: I'm not kidding, they ALL look like this here)
*And SHE (The Italian Vanna White) is the closest thing to "Cheesy" that you will ever find in Italy* (Note: SHE was imported from Canada)

Italians are a stylin' population, contrary to American stereotypes of Italians. This is so complicated to explain without visuals, so here you go:

*American stereotype of an Italian guy*
*Real Live Italian Guy*
JUST KIDDING!! This is more like it... I will say that in eleven years of living in Italy, I may have looked twice at about ten men...too thin and femmy for me. I am definitely in the right place.

When I tried to explain these stereotypes of the typical Italian guy to Perla, her mouth dropped to the floor. She also couldn't understand the concept of "Cheesy," just doesn't happen here.

However, teenagers walk around wearing this t-shirt (Sofia will NEVER walk around town in one of these):

Simone wanted to stick it on his motorbike. He said, "Well, Valentino Rossi wears WLF on his gear!" I said, "What is WLF?" The three were somewhat embarrassed for all of three seconds and then, excited to teach ME something, said,"Viva la Fica!" Of course, you know the next question out of their mouths was, "How do you say that in English?" I said, "NOPE, not this time, kids." A professional English teacher has to draw the line somewhere! WLF means LLP...you figure it out...cause I ain't going there with y'all either.

Have a great Sunday!