Give Me a Sign

by Anna Sortino

Wearing them helps, but they’re never going to be a perfect fix. What people don’t understand is that when I’m wearing my hearing aids, there’s still a lot that I miss. And without them, there’s still a lot I could catch by relying on lipreading and deductive reasoning.

And maybe, if the loss were profound, my family would be forced to finally take learning American Sign Language seriously.

Because right now, they know I’m not hearing, but I don’t fit their expectations of deafness, either. It’s a strange realm, here in the middle.

I can think of one place where I didn’t feel this way: Gray Wolf, a summer camp for the deaf and blind. I stopped going after eighth grade, since leaving for an entire summer didn’t really fit into my plans once high school began. But it was a unique place where I didn’t have to explain my hearing loss to anyone. And it was my introduction to sign language and Deaf culture. I’m starting to really miss it.

People give too much power to labels. It can feel exclusionary, whether intentional or not.

But we have hearing parents, and like most other deaf and hard of hearing kids, we’ve been raised with the goal of being hearing-passing.

Instead of ASL lessons, Max and I got years of speech therapy. Which is fine, I guess, but why not both?

“I thought no one here would remember me,” I say. He watches my lips, grinning. “Nah.”

They made the position just for Ethan, rather than letting him be the director, ’cause they’d rather keep Gary around.”

“We were last summer,” Simone answers. “But I wasn’t sure if I’d be back.” “So not this summer?” I ask. “That remains to be seen,” Bobby says.

“We wouldn’t know our limitations if people didn’t keep telling us.”

When I get mad I need space to calm down but I’m not mad anymore. I came back because I want to spend the rest of the summer here. With you.

It’s not hearing loss—it’s Deaf gain.