Hands of My Father

Chapter One

The Sound of Silence My first language was sign.

I was born shortly after midnight, July 1, 1933, my parents’ first child. Thus I had one tiny reluctant foot in the first half of that historically fateful year, and the other firmly planted in the second half. In a way my birth date, squarely astride the calendar year, was a metaphor for my subsequent life, one foot always being dragged back to the deaf world, the silent world of my father and of my mother, from whose womb I had just emerged, and the other trying to stride forward into the greater world of the hearing, to escape into the world destined to be my own.

Many years later I realized what a great expression of optimism it was for my father and mother, two deaf people, to decide to have a child at the absolute bottom of the Great Depression.

We lived in Brooklyn, near Coney Island, where on certain summer days, when the wind was blowing just right and our kitchen window was open and the shade drawn up on its roller, I could smell the briny odor of the ocean, layered with just the barest hint of mustard and grilled hot dogs (although that could have been my imagination).

Our apartment was four rooms on the third floor of a new red-brick building encrusted with bright orange fire escapes, which my father and mother had found by walking the neighborhood, and then negotiated for with the impatient hearing landlord all by themselves despite their respective parents’ objections that they “could not manage alone” as they were “deaf and handicapped” and “helpless” and would surely “be cheated.” They had just returned from their honeymoon, spent blissfully in Washington, D.C., planned to coincide with the silent, colorful explosion of the blossoming cherry trees, which my mother considered a propitious omen for the successful marriage of two deaf people.

Apartment 3A was the only home my father ever knew as a married man. Its four rooms were the place he lived with and loved his deaf wife, and raised his two hearing sons, and then left by ambulance one day forty-four years after arriving there, never to return.

One day my father’s hands signed in sorrow and regret the story of how he had become deaf. This was a story he had pieced together from facts he had learned later in life from his younger sister, Rose, who in turn had heard it from their mother. (The fact that he had to learn the details of his own deafness from his younger hearing sister was a source of enduring resentment.)

My father told me he had been born in 1902, a normal hearing child, but at an early age had contracted spinal meningitis. His parents, David and Rebecca, newly arrived in America from Russia, living in an apartment in the Bronx, thought their baby would die.

My father’s fever ravaged his little body for over a week. Cold baths during the day and wet sheet-shrouded nights kept him alive. When his fever at last abated, he was deaf. My father would never again hear a sound in all the remaining years of his life. As an adult, he often questioned why it was that he had been singled out as the only member of his family to become deaf.

I, his hearing son, watched his hands sign his anguish: “Not fair!”

My father and his father could barely communicate with each other. Their entire shared vocabulary con

Share your thoughts on the Hands of My Father ebook with other internet viewers!

Title of ebook: Hands of My Father
ISBN: 9780553906271
parent-ISBN: 9780553806885
Publisher: Bantam Books
Pages: 256
Published: 02-2009
Released online for download: 02-02-2009
Author of eBook: Uhlberg, Myron

Format

Encrypted

Sku

ISBN

File size

Security

Printing

Copying

Read aloud

Devices

Mobipocket

Yes

9780553906271

621 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

Sys Requirements

Download reader

eReader

Yes

5552005457

9780553906271

996 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

Sys Requirments

Download reader

Microsoft

Yes

5552005449

9780553906271

1847 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

Sys Requirments

Download reader

Digital Editions

Yes

0553906275

9780553906271

2582 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

Sys Requirments

Download reader

Hands of My Father

A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love
Chapter One

The Sound of Silence My first language was sign.

I was born shortly after midnight, July 1, 1933, my parents’ first child. Thus I had one tiny reluctant foot in the first half of that historically fateful year, and the other firmly planted in the second half. In a way my birth date, squarely astride the calendar year, was a metaphor for my subsequent life, one foot always being dragged back to the deaf world, the silent world of my father and of my mother, from whose womb I had just emerged, and the other trying to stride forward into the greater world of the hearing, to escape into the world destined to be my own.

Many years later I realized what a great expression of optimism it was for my father and mother, two deaf people, to decide to have a child at the absolute bottom of the Great Depression.

We lived in Brooklyn, near Coney Island, where on certain summer days, when the wind was blowing just right and our kitchen window was open and the shade drawn up on its roller, I could smell the briny odor of the ocean, la ... read full excerpt from: Hands of My Father ebook

Top eBooks in "Personal Memoirs"

Confessions of a Video Vixen

by Steffans, Karrine

Review: This book was raw, entertaining and real! I never thought the life of video vixen could be so glam and yet so lonely. A must read for women out there who have ...more

Best price: $9.72

Belle de Jour: Diary of an Unlikely Call Girl

by Anonymous

Belle couldn't find a job after University. Her impressive degree was not paying her rent or buying her food. But after a fantastic threesome with a very rich couple who gave ...more

Best price: $8.64

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India a

by Gilbert, Elizabeth

This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the ...more

Best price: $14.17

Kidnapped: A Diary of My 373 Days in Captivity

by Kalli, Leszli

On April 12, 1999, Leszli Kálli boarded a plane in Colombia to work on a kibbutz in Israel, but she never made it. The plane was hijacked by a leftist guerrilla group and ...more

Best price: $13.04

West of Kabul, East of New York

by Ansary, Tamim, Ansary, Mir Tamim

A passionate personal journey through two cultures in conflict...more

Best price: $8.38

Hannah's Gift

by Housden, Maria

every once in a while a book comes along that can change your life -- a book so special, it is destined not just to be read but to be cherished, to be passed from one...more

Best price: $10.34

Other Biography eBooks Categories

Biography General (2212)

Personal Memoirs (1822)

Women (494)

Literary (218)

Medical (119)

Political (219)

Travelers (32)

Entertainers (407)

Military (204)

Religious (205)