Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.
Vera Nazarian
At the end of my first year at CID, my mother and Dunbar came to visit for a few days before we went home together for the summer. Mother wanted to observe Mrs. Olmstead’s class so that she could continue to work with me during the summer, emphasizing what the teacher wanted me to retain. For some reason, my mother and Dunbar, who were staying at a motel, decided to leave me at the dormitory for the night of their visit. They probably didn’t want to interfere with my daily schedule.
When they were getting ready to return to the motel for the night, I was so upset about staying in the dorm that I unleashed my outrage verbally. “I want go to motel with you tonight,” I said, pointing to my chest, then to my mother and Dunbar, and then outside.
“We’ll see you in the morning and in a few days, we will go home,” Mother said.
“Not fair for Dunbar and David home, school, home, school, home,” I said, using my index finger to point back and forth to home and school. “I go far away. I stay school, school, school, school. Why me? Not fair!”
Mother started to cry a bit. “We want the best education for you,” she said. “We are sorry.”
I just didn’t understand why I couldn’t stay with the family as my brothers did. Although I had now been living for several months in a school for deaf children, I still didn’t comprehend the word “deaf” and how that concept related to me. Imagining hearing—something I had never experienced—was simply beyond the intellectual powers of a six-year-old. With that central concept missing, much about my life and my separation from my family remained a mystery to me.
My first summer after CID went swiftly, and all too soon it was time for me to return to school. I was none too happy when my mother took me shopping for new clothes at the end of that summer. We had done the same thing the year before for the same reason, but then I hadn’t comprehended the fact that I was going to be away from home. Now the meaning sank in and saddened me. For the next nine years, the pattern was the same: the two weeks before the departure for school in September were always hectic. My mother and I went to stores to buy clothes and other items. Then she started what seemed like a ridiculous ritual—sewing a name tag with my name printed on it into every piece of clothing.
That second year, Dunbar and my mother drove me to St. Louis. After arriving at school and taking the suitcase and footlocker up to the dormitory, we returned to the car for our final farewell. I cried and resisted the attempt to take me back into the main school building. My poor mother started crying also and had to stay in the car. Dunbar, picking me up in his arms, carried me into the school while I kicked and fought him. When we got inside I was embarrassed to be seen being carried, so I stopped fighting. Relieved, Dunbar took me by the hand up the stairs to the dormitory. We hugged and he left. I was relieved to see Rusty’s parents also deliver a teary child. We consoled each other. That first-day classroom was full of subdued children, all tired from crying.
Mrs. Olmstead was my teacher again that year, and to my relief Rusty and Rochelle were in my class again. Mrs. Olmstead tried to make us forget our homesickness by drawing our attention to things we could look forward to. That second year, though the classroom activities were similar, our vocabularies expanded and we communicated more than ever. We wrote more and the teacher gave us many more paper activities. We received instructions such as: “Please color the second car blue. Circle the yellow balloon. Show me something soft. Draw a picture of a cat under the table.”
Now that we were learning to read, the high point of our classroom days was getting a letter from home and sharing it with the class. Mrs. Olmstead usually helped us read the letters and generated conversations between us about what was happening at home.
My mother wrote often, and Rochelle got letters from home almost as frequently as I did. Sadly, Rusty received almost no mail from his parents, perhaps one letter every three or four weeks. Rusty got upset every time mail came without a letter for him. Even when he received mail, there wasn’t much information about what was happening at home, which was also a big disappointment for him.
Mrs. Olmstead was always concerned about making all of us feel good about ourselves. Since Rusty was so much a part of my life, she asked my mother to write to him from time to time. I remember several times watching Rusty read letters that had my mother’s familiar handwriting. I wasn’t jealous, because I cherished Rusty as my best friend. Mrs. Olmstead tried to persuade Rusty’s parents to write him more often but to no avail. It turned out that Rusty’s parents were having marital problems, which may explain why they wrote so infrequently.
Letters from my parents usually included pictures or drawings, as well as cutouts from newspapers and magazines. These were important stimuli for developing my communication skills in both expressive and receptive language. Mrs. Olmstead showed great interest in everything we got from home, but she didn’t appear to be trespassing. We were always glad to share our mail with her, for she always had things to say to increase our self-esteem and pride in our families. As I see it now, she had a genius for turning situations into opportunities to use and expand our language and reading skills.
Being away at school, we cherished photographs of our family members and snapshots of our pets and home life. We spent lots of time discussing these photographs. They were visually comforting and helped us illustrate the stories we told of our homes. These simple treasures were vital in helping a group of lonely children adjust to a life removed from family.
During that second year, we also focused on short sentences, penmanship, and writing words on paper with a pencil. Mrs. Olmstead introduced us to spelling tests, which were a favorite for me throughout my years there. CID added a new wrinkle to the old spelling bee because it involved lipreading as well. When a teacher said a word, we had to lipread it before we could spell it on paper. We had hundreds of spelling tests during our years, which meant that CID students have always been good spellers. The fact that we were deaf and had to concentrate on several levels that a hearing person needn’t bother with added to our learning. Since we couldn’t rely on the sound of the word to guess a spelling, we had to read it and study it. Conversely, we ran into trouble if Mrs. Olmstead used a word that we had never seen on lips before.
We spent hours reading. We were asked to read aloud sentences from the blackboard and from books opened for us to read together. Print was attractive to me from the beginning, and Mrs. Olmstead didn’t have to do much to encourage me to read. For a deaf person, reading can be a special window into the world of communication.
Oddly enough, reading is an activity that is normally difficult to teach deaf children and an exercise that some schools fail to pursue adequately, as my parents discovered in their first visits to schools for the deaf. I attribute much of my natural interest in literature to my family and Mrs. Olmstead’s enthusiasm for it. There is nothing like the power of a book to enhance vocabulary and open new vistas.