Bereishit

Bereishit, in the beginning. I was born on September 11, 1959, in Kingston, NY. Kingston was the original capital of New York State. September 11, in 1959 had no meaning to anyone other than it was just another date in the year. It gained infamy years later, when the Twin Towers were taken down by Homicide Bombers.

My parents, of course were overjoyed at my arrival. My father had never seen such a small baby and he was worried. He said my tushy was so tiny. He shouldn't have worried so much -- I have WAY more than made up for that now!

Life was basically uneventful for me. Until I was nearly four years old. It was then my mother realized that my speech was not improving as it should have been and she noticed that I did not seem to hear her if I was in another room or if she was behind me. She must have been scared. She took me to several doctors. The doctors pronounced me healthy, nothing was wrong with me. She thought she must be a neurotic mother. She wondered what was she doing to me, was she going to make me crazy? Was she a crazy mother?

But my mother's intuition that something was wrong was too strong. She took me to see a specialist. His name was Dr. John K. Duffy. He was actually a rather well known doctor and he did many wonderful things. I came to love him. He diagnosed me correctly and referred us to the CP (Cerebral Palsy) Center in Kingston, NY. Back then the CP center (now known as the Community Rehabilitation Center) was just a hole in the wall in a building mostly occupied by the Kingston Police Department. At the CP center I was fitted for my first pair of hearing aids, bulky behind the ear hearing aids by Beltone. (Note: the link to the picture is just an approximation of what I had. The hearing aid in the picture is slimmer and shorter than what I had -- and I was just four years old when I had them!)

I actually have no memory of being fitted for hearing aids. I do not remember the first time I had them put on me. And I never really realized that, or thought about it, until I read Michael Chorost's book, "Rebuilt". In his book he describes his first time wearing hearing aids: he does not remember it. And he thought, as I do as well, that one would think that a person having existed with the absence of sound, that when one finally does hear sound that it would be as if suddenly the light went on. It should have been a memorable moment in his life, in my life -- but it was not. Neither of us have any memory of this.

To be sure, I do remember the audiological evaluations, the bulky headphones I was to wear during testing, the soundproof rooms, the colored blocks I was supposed to hold up whenever I heard a sound, repeating words and phrases for the audiologist. My audiologist was also my speech therapist. Her name was Wanda Lee. Wanda was so good to me. I remember her as a round soft overweight woman, who was alway smiling, always warm and friendly to me. Under the supervision of Dr. Duffy she provided for me speech therapy using ITA (Initial Teaching Alphabet).

In the beginning I went 5 days a week for a year for speech therapy. The following year, I went four days a week for a year, and the following year I went three days a week, and so on until after five years, I was "finished". By then I was just finishing third grade. Going to the CP center exposed me to other children with other kinds of disabilities, mostly motor disabilities. But I never felt I was one of them. To me, they were the oddities, and I was normal.

When I entered Kindergarten, it was thought that I should not be placed in the reading program because it was feared that it would confuse me because I was learning to both read and speak using ITA. When my Kindergarten year was over, the school wanted to place me in a special education class. But my parents consulted with Dr. Duffy about it and he said absolutely NOT. He wanted me in the regular classes. There was nothing wrong with my intelligence. And so, I was placed in regular classes in a public school.

Now, this was only possible because it was 1964. Had it been many years later, my parents would have had to become my advocates, hire a lawyer and fight the school system to "allow" me to be "mainstreamed". The term mainstream, while it certainly existed in 1964, did not have the charged meaning it now has when referring to students who have any kind of disability. In this instance, I actually benefitted from the fact that schools still did not know enough about my kind of disability to have in place a "special" program. Michael Chorost did not have that experience. He went to a school for the Deaf and when he was in a public school he was in a special class.

Upon entering first grade, the teachers did not know what my reading ability was. So, they stuck me in the slowest, lowest level reading group. After class that day it was obvious that was not appropriate for me so they moved me up a level the next day. The next day it was clear that even that was not appropriate for me so they moved me up a level the following day. This repeated it self again the next day until I was finally placed in the high honors reading group. Their initial placement of me is certainly indicative of their assumed correlation between deafness and intelligence! In fact, I exceeded all the other readers in the high honors group and thus was sent downstairs to my former kindergarten class to read a story to the children. My former kindergarten teacher was so moved that she called my mother later and tearfully told her that she never expected me to be able to do that!

(More later...)