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Today I went to get our taxes done at the tiny office of a neighborhood accountant/travel agent. I had phoned ahead and the receptionist told me in a slight Polish accent, "Yes, we can do it today. Just come in anytime."
When I arrived, I saw a line of people seated along the wall to my left, and a row of three desks opposite them. An opening in the rear wall opened onto an office space. The heads and racks of two five-point bucks stuck out of frames above the people seated on a long blond wood bench, a couple of folding chairs and a couple of desk chairs. As I entered the people in line glanced at me, then returned their collective gaze to the television above my right shoulder.
I took a seat.
Three people sat in the desks across from me. A clean-cut man in his thirties talked on the phone and took sheet after sheet out of the printer as the woman in the middle desk wandered back and forth between her swivel chair and a door marked "Employees Only," the zipper of her beige and gold sweater straining against her ample breasts and love handles. The woman in the front desk greeted people as they came in and answered the phone in Polish. In contrast to the stubborn, if aging, femininity of her neighbor, this woman seemed to have surrendered to a sexless appearance that satisfied the requirements of both working in an office and hiding as much torso as possible. Between her desk and the front window was a pile of brown cardboard boxes tied together with twine.
She got up and stood on the large-capacity postage scale next to her desk without removing the black boots that gave her a total stature of about five foot four. The digital readout on the divider between her and the boxes read 213 pounds.
I looked around me. A collection of framed certificates and credentials lined the rectangular opening in the rear wall, beyond which the accountant was working with someone on their taxes. Above the rectangle were two miniature deer heads covered with real hide, with horns made from polished and sharpened tree branches. Between and on either side of them were a collection of small, ornate hunting horns that seemed to be crafted from the horns of cattle. They were carved with intricate designs and the bell ends were filigreed in silver.
An elderly woman came in and I turned as I heard the tinkle of the little bell on the door. The woman's head was covered with a bright green scarf accented with yellow, pink and red paisleys. She nodded vaguely toward everyone, said, "Dzien dobry," and asked the woman in the front desk some questions.
The television above her caught my attention. It was a Polish movie about two men dressed in scrubs? In a badly-lit space-station run by women in uniforms? I wasn't sure. The pasty protagonists did not interest me, but I was surprised to see a woman dressed only in underpants emerge from a hall in the background and go operate some kind of buttony console. Okay, not regular grandma underpants like you and I wear, but green high-cut deals, and high-heeled boots.
I felt my face make a puzzled and slightly disturbed expression. Was this some kind of cheesy futuristic plot in which men get captured or mysteriously transported to a world run by dominatrices and where women did everything topless? Were they showing porn to the people waiting to do their taxes?
In a word, yes. Soft core, but still porn.
I looked down the row of waiting taxpayers and saw that the attractive gray-haired mom and her early-20's son were both staring at the screen. The extremely well-put-together petite 50-something woman in a suit and meticulous makeup was watching from her straight-backed perch on the edge of the blond wood bench. The craggy man next to me was watching, too.
Scenes of all-female sporting events in which losers gave winners their shirts, attempts to sabotage the space station or whatever, nude swimming and lots of yelling by the uniformed dominatrix-types flashed across the screen. I watched to make sure I wasn't imagining it, but focused on sending text messages to Amy and trying to figure out how to play the dumb games on my new phone.
A scene faded to black and then the screen just showed a picture of the two flabtastic heroes and the words "Seks Misja." The woman at the front desk got up to put in disk two. Disk two??? It was beyond awful.
About an hour and a half later I finally got called to do my taxes. Seks Misja had finally ended and another, more awful but less pornographic movie was on when my turn came up. I had also gotten to know a lot about touring New Zealand, thanks to the brochures in the magazine rack. The good news is I only had to pay $50 to get my taxes done, and we only owe about $200 this year. The bad news? I'll never get back that hour and a half of my life. It will forever be marked by the pasty men with breasts to rival those of the women of Misja.
Paula just went and woke up Joel by saying, "Hi, sweetheart!" Too cute, especially since I'm already up.
Paula began squirming around 4:45 this morning. I got up to change her, which she took as permission to converse.
"I love you, Mommy. I do."
I said nothing, hoping this would be just an endearment before more sleep.
"I love you, Mommy. I love my birthday. Happy birthday to Paula! Today is my birthday. I like my birthday. I love you."
I leaned close to her forehead so my nose and upper lip would brush her skin, and said in a low voice, "I love you, too."
"Shhhh! Daddy's sleeping!"
Okay.
She laid quietly for about two minutes, then sat up to look at the clock.
"Clock says six!"
"No it doesn't, sweetie. The clock still says five. It's still time to sleep."
She sat there for another few minutes.
"No, sweetie. The clock still says five."
Now she was sitting next to where I was lying, and she put her hands on my chest. On my breasts, to be exact. She was rubbing my breasts.
"That's a nice bra, Mommy."
Oh, Lord. I covered my breasts with my hands. "Those are Mommy's, Paula."
"Excuse me! Excuse me! I need your bra!"
"No you don't, Paula! Those are mine!"
She stopped and laid down, cuddled into the crook of my arm. She was quiet for a while, then,
That's nice, dear.
We laid quietly for a while, in which I drifted to the edge of sleep and back four or five times.
Paula sat up again and looked at the clock.
"Clock says five."
I checked and it was about five till six.
She laid down for two or three seconds, then checked it again.
"Clock says five." And so on for the next five minutes. And then,
"Clock says six! Clock says six! Time for milk! Time for milk!"
She climbed off the foot of her bed and jumped on the floor, chanting her sped-up version of the good news. "Ta ta ta! Ta ta ta!"
I kicked the covers off my legs and made my way to the kitchen for the six-o'clock milk.
Getting ready to do our taxes in February. Usually we get that sort of thing together in, um, May? But this year we absolutely HAVE to get the taxes done before March 1 so we can submit a financial aid application for Paula's school (tuition for same, I just found out, is 100% deductible on account of Paula's hearing loss!!! Yay hearing loss!). So we won't be continuing our tradition of dropping off our taxes late in the evening at the central post office. Could this mean we're growing up? If it does, it's only because that little munchkin in pigtails deserves the best we can give her, and school says March first is the deadline.
I've been reading this book, On the Fence: Hard of Hearing in a Hearing World. I found out about it on my friend Karen's (highly recommended) blog, and thought, "Now there's something that can help me learn about Paula's world."
You know what? According to the contributors of essays, poems and personal stories in On the Fence, life with a hearing loss can be damn depressing. I look up from the book at my bright-eyed child, full of promise and feel a little bummed out.
People talk about dealing with hearing people who refuse to follow simple communication strategies when speaking with a hoh person: face the person, speak clearly at a moderate pace, use a strong voice, use facial expressions that reflect your meaning, and keep your face visible at all times. One woman writes about working under bosses who would talk at top speed while moving around the room, writing on white boards and drinking coffee. This woman would ask for clarification and be treated as though she were stupid. She requested interpreters and was accused of using her disability as an excuse for poor work performance. It's frustrating to even consider what that kind of work environment would do to one's head and health. This woman finally found a niche working with other late-deafened adults, people who shared her understanding. I'm glad her story has a happy ending, but the middle part still bothers me a lot as I imagine what Paula's life might be like in the future.
Other contributors talk about the annoyances of wearing hearing aids. They amplify all kinds of sounds, not just the useful ones. They may not make it easier to understand what people say, depending on all kinds of things like background noise and cross-talk. I wonder if Paula will eventually opt not to wear her aids; once she develops a sound knowledge of English it will be her choice. Our family therapist, a hoh woman from a hearing family, said that in her early 20's she took off her aids and never put them on again. They were just too annoying.
Participating in group conversations is almost out of the question in an oral (that is to say, non-signing) environment for a person who is deaf or hoh. So I wonder again what family gatherings are like for Paula. When it's Joel's family it's always chaotic: jokes are told at rapid fire, it's a mix of Spanish and English, turn-taking might as well be an exotic and mystifying ritual detailed in Margaret Mead's field notes. I've always assumed that Paula isn't that interested in the adult conversation, but maybe it's just totally incomprehensible. It makes me wonder if we should try to change. I wonder if we can change.
Tomorrow the deaf division at Paula's school is going to an interpreted play at a downtown theater. I'll be chaperoning, because I wouldn't dream of missing the opportunity to watch interpreters - and a play - with my daughter who will likely soak in the play and maybe the interpreters. As I read On the Fence, I think sending her to Children of Peace is the one thing I feel we're absolutely doing right. The book's contributors tell about feeling isolated from their peers in mainstream classes and reprimanded by teachers for "not listening" - this makes me want to scream. But Paula's classmates are either hoh, too, or have deaf and hoh siblings. Her teachers speak and sign to her, they know to get her attention before talking to her. They use their hands, their tone of voice, their facial expression, their body language in concert to make sure their messages get across.
I don't know what kind of challenges Paula will face in the future. She will almost certainly be mainstreamed in a few years. She will definitely have to go out in the world as she gets older and figure out how to advocate for herself, support herself, travel, explore and live a full life. I hate that I can't make any of that easier for her, even knowing that life is not about easy, life is about good. I face her future with a mixture of optimism and fear, but at least I know right now she's getting what she needs in a place where they understand her.
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