46
Rebecca and Amy
After starting school at sixteen months, seventeen years later Amy is finally receiving recognition for all her hard work. Not only is she valedictorian of her class, but she also receives several special awards and scholarships. During the course of the ceremonies, as each graduate’s name is called, their family and friends are asked to stand. Amy has the largest group in attendance. My three sisters and their families, Jack and Linda with her two children, John, Amy’s godmother, Mrs. Beatty, and my father are present. I’m sad my mother isn’t here; she’d be so proud of her namesake. Mother died two years ago after several grueling years of fighting bone cancer.
This fall Amy will attend Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., and John will return to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Student loans for John, and scholarships, assistance from the Buffett Foundation, and my purse make it possible for her to attend Gallaudet.
As I prepare to endure the expense of having two children in college, my friend Pat brings me a small gift. I open the package and discover a mug filled with new pencils. On the mug is written, “Pencils 5 Cents.” I chuckle as I pour her a glass of iced tea and we prepare to play cribbage.
Amy’s NSD high school graduation. May 1987. Jack, Amy, John, and Rebecca Willman.
“Look at this.” I show her a small silver dish with a cork liner.
“What is it?” Pat shuffles the cards.
“My sister Helen sent it to me. It’s a fancy dish for a bottle of wine, but Helen said with two kids in college next year, I might want to use it as an offering plate.”
“Looks like one, that’s for sure.” Pat searches her purse, retrieves a dime and places it in the silver plate.
“Thanks. I need all the help I can get.”
All the activities I participated in at NSD added to my educational experience. At NSD I learned about Gallaudet University, the only deaf liberal arts university in the world.
I never really knew about Gallaudet until I was a seventh grader. One of my seven subjects was study hall. So, I spent fifty minutes daily at the library. Sometimes I studied and did my homework and other times I just explored the bookshelves. One shelf was filled with Gallaudet College Tower Clock books from the 1960s and 1970s. The Tower Clock is Gallaudet’s college yearbook. I was curious, which led me to read the books. There were some funny pictures in the books. I wondered why the students did these things and my classmates and I discussed the photos and laughed about them.
Amy and Marge Beatty, her godmother and preschool Deaf teacher, at Amy’s graduation, 1987.
One day I discovered some of my NSD teachers and staff were in the Tower Clock yearbook. I asked Bruce Becker, the houseparent for the high school boys, about the pictures.
He told me, “Go to Gallaudet when you graduate and find out for yourself.”
Other graduates from Gallaudet at NSD told me, “Go to Gallaudet. You will love it for sure.”
Ironically, graduates from Gallaudet told me to look up Phi Kappa Zeta and encouraged me to join that sorority. (Many years later I did, and joined it!)
As I read and looked through the pictures and stories from the yearbook, I thought to myself, why did the students dress up like that? There were photos of sororities and fraternities doing their probation with uniforms. Other photos were of rat funerals and naked streaking by students. The Tower Clock books made me really very, very curious. Teachers and staff at NSD encouraged me to attend there.
At that time, Gallaudet was the only Deaf liberal arts college in the world. I thought it was awesome. Later in high school, I learned there were other Deaf colleges combined with hearing colleges, but I continued to tell myself, I will apply to only one college: Gallaudet.
To be accepted, you must be fluent in sign, which is no problem for me, and capable of doing college-level courses. Many applicants must attend a year of preparatory classes before being admitted as a freshman, but I was accepted as a freshman. Assistance from the Buffett Foundation and Mother made it possible for me to attend Gallaudet.
John overdrew his bank account several times when he was a freshman at the university. To ensure this does not happen with Amy, I open a checking account for her in June so I will know she is capable of managing her finances at Gallaudet this fall. I explain to Amy that her account has no monthly fee, but she’ll be charged ten cents for each check written. In July, Amy and her friend Angie, who graduated two years ago from NSD, arrange to meet at the mall to shop for clothes. Angie will return to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, New York, this fall to finish her degree. Amy grabs the car keys. “I’ll be back in three or four hours.”
Fifteen minutes later she stomps into the house, fuming.
“What is the matter, Amy?”
She pulls her bank book from her purse. “I went to money machine for $20 and the paper says I have $106.37 in the bank. My book says $106.97. Where is my sixty cents?”
“Let me see your checkbook.” I examine her check register noting that she has failed to subtract the ten cent fee for checks she wrote. “Amy, you wrote six checks last month, so you need to sub …”
“What! The bank did nothing.” Amy snatches the checkbook from my hand and scribbles something in it. “They’re ripping me off.”
I laugh, having felt the same way. “Well, Amy, I suggest you take a number and get in line. Thousands of people feel the same way.”
As Amy backs the car down the driveway, I realize my concern that she’d overdraw her checking account was unfounded. This is the child who counted her money every week when she came home from NSD to make sure John and I had not taken so much as a penny from her mailbox bank.
Preparing Amy for college is not much different than preparing her for NSD. The main difference is the drive time, and the amount of paperwork to complete. John’s college classes start two weeks after Amy’s so I plan to make the journey to Washington a vacation. We’ll visit the Amish country, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and tour the monuments in Washington before taking Amy to Gallaudet.
In mid-July Gallaudet sends an envelope of forms: health insurance, roommate preference, arrival information, and a huge psychological evaluation. Some of the words in this form are unfamiliar to Amy, so I sit with her to explain words as she completes it.
While I have struggled most of my adult life with feelings of inadequacy by trying to achieve perfection, Amy’s answers reveal she is more confident than I am, and probably better adjusted.
“How many more? We already do one hundred.” Amy asks, impatient to be finished with the questionnaire.
“About fifteen.” I inhale and read, “Have you ever contemplated suicide?” Knowing that the suicide rate is high among deaf people due to their isolation, I’m interested in Amy’s response.
“No. Never. Why would I do that?” Her pen makes a slash through the “no” box.
My tense shoulders relax. I’d like to take the credit for raising a well-adjusted, confident daughter, but I’m not sure I had much to do with it. By the grace of God, Amy is becoming a woman who will accomplish much due to her positive attitude and determination.
That night at supper, Amy seems lost in thought. John and I try to engage her in conversation, but she is uninterested. When I serve dessert, I see tears in her eyes.
“Amy, what’s the matter? Don’t you feel well?”
“I’m fine.”
“If you’re fine, why are you crying?” John asks.
“I’m not crying.” She brushes tears from her cheeks.
A list of Amy’s possible concerns race through my head. Maybe she’s worried about being so far away from home. No, I don’t think so. She’s boarded at school for years. She’s accustomed to being away from her family. Perhaps she doesn’t want to go to college. That can’t be it; she’s talked about attending Gallaudet for the last two years. None of her classmates are going there; maybe she’s afraid of not having any friends.
“Something is bothering you. What is it?” I ask.
“What if I fail? Maybe I can’t do the homework at Gallaudet?” Amy says.
I’m surprised. I did not think failure was in Amy’s vocabulary, not an option for her. “Amy, I don’t see how you could fail. You are a good student, used to getting As and Bs. The classes will be harder so you might have some Cs the first year, but I am sure you can do the work.”
“I don’t want to fail.”
“Study hard; you will do fine.”
Amy’s freshman year at Gallaudet does not include failure—instead it is filled with more new experiences.