Caroline and I have found our own way to whisper.
Every couple of weeks, we have a sleepover. As we lie next to each other in my bed, she’ll wait for a moment while I take my hearing aids out and place them with my glasses on the nightstand. Once the lights are out we practically transform into preteen girls having a sleepover, though with me no longer able to see or hear, we are left to whisper our secrets using only our hands. At first, Caroline learned sign language from me, and then continued, for me, for us, and now we are both practicing our tactile sign, the language used by people who are both deaf and blind. This way, no matter how dark or noisy it is, or however limited my hearing or vision becomes, we will always be able to talk to each other.
We’ll lie facing one another, and she’ll take both of my hands and place hers inside of them. As her hand begins to take form, I’ll start to sound out the word she is spelling in my hand, listening intently with my palm and fingers, closing my eyes to help me focus. While I hold and follow the movement of her hands, Caroline will bring her pointer finger to her chest, and I’ll speak aloud what she is signing. As her pointer finger continues into its next sign, she’ll wait for me to speak each word to be sure that I have understood her.
At first we were terrible at it, and I would start to giggle at every mistake—most of them mine—and though I couldn’t hear Caroline, I knew she was giggling, too, because I could feel the quick little bounces her upper body would make against the bed. Like a child’s game of telephone, the more confused we got, the funnier it was, and each mistake would make us laugh harder. Caroline could hear the sound of my laughter loud and clear, but she knew that I couldn’t hear hers, so she would take my hand and place it against her neck right at her vocal cords, so that I could feel her laughing, which made me laugh even harder.
We’ve gotten better at it, and sometimes I’m astonished at what we’ve accomplished in the complete silence and darkness. Now I know that I will never be alone, no matter how dark and silent my world may become, and Caroline knows that she will never lose me.
Watching people tactile-sign is like watching two people embrace, an elaborate dance of hands and fingers. When people communicate through tactile sign they stand close, facing each other, their arms moving in unison and their hands acting as eyes, ears, and voices.
With Facebook and texting and everything else that has replaced face-to-face communication, even a phone call can feel like a rare intimacy these days (unless you’re in my family, where no one seems able to go for more than six hours without calling one another).
Tactile sign, though, is by its very nature intimate. It requires close touch and total concentration on another person. It is the only way to communicate one-on-one without sight or hearing, and it is how Annie Sullivan famously blew open Helen Keller’s prison of silence and darkness, holding her hands under the spigot and then signing “water” into them over and over, until it came alive in her hands.
Tactile sign requires time and patience, two things that seem to be in short supply these days—for me included. It is not something you can do while multitasking, half-listening while you type an email or flip through a magazine. It requires giving someone else your full attention while they give you theirs, which is, when you think about it, an extraordinarily rare thing. Your mind can’t simply wander to other things—what you’re going to have for lunch, the work you need to get done, the things that are constantly running through the backs of our minds while we do something else—because your total attention is needed here, in the present, in your sensitive palms and fingertips.
It also requires a level of physical intimacy that many of us are uncomfortable with. There is no masking your feelings behind a keyboard, no looking away, no distance. It is honest and generally free of small talk, and it can feel strange and a little scary to be that physically close to someone, but it is also extraordinarily exhilarating to be able to experience people in such a different and meaningful way.
This is a way that I will always be able to keep my precious relationships, and maybe even to make new ones, with those patient enough to try. I can’t imagine a life that only contracts and doesn’t expand to include new friends. If I am blind and deaf, will I still be able to know and love new people? A part of me is skeptical, but then I think of Helen Keller, of how much she loved others and loved the world. She accomplished so much in her life and inspired so many people, and thinking of her gives me the strength to know that I can do this, that I can have a fulfilling, joyful life no matter how much I lose.
When we watch most people with their pets or newborn babies, we can see how gently they treat them and the affection that is given so easily from one to the other. With their big eyes and total innocence, babies and dogs are so easy to love, and to touch and be touched by without fear.
One of the most important things that I have learned in my field of work is that people crave human connection and need to be touched. Those who don’t like it, and who shy away from touch, generally have been given a good reason to be wary of it. In my practice I keep pillows with textures on the couch and chair in my office, and I frequently watch people recount a memory while using a fingertip to outline the bumpy stitching on one of those pillows. Others hug one to their chest as they speak to me in session. They use them for comfort, or to express fidgeting anxiety or even happiness, and I can pick up on more about them by the way that they are touching things.
I think that the importance of touch is often overlooked in everyday life, especially once we become adults. As children, we wrestle and chase and throw our arms around those we love with wholehearted affection. Study after study has shown that people who are touched more are happier and live longer, but I don’t think most of us are touched nearly enough. I grew up in a houseful of huggers. We are all affectionate and snuggly and feel comfortable in one another’s space. For me, touch is imperative. It grounds me and connects me to people, and it is a huge part of how I communicate. I don’t want to have to live without seeing or hearing, but I can, and will, live a good life without those senses. Nobody can survive without being touched.