‘What do you mean?’
‘She was there with me and then gone. I ran out as fast as I could, and couldn’t see her anywhere!’ Li grabbed Sophie, startling her.
It hit me, what he was saying. ‘Oh, Christ, Li! She could have been kidnapped!’
‘I know! I was in agony! How was I going to tell you?’ He turned to Sophie. ‘Sophie, never run away like that again! Sophie, you hear me? Don’t do that!’
And then Sophie burst into tears. How could she know what was going on? All she’d wanted to do was come back to me, and clearly, with her incredible visual sense, she knew exactly how to find me.
What a terrifying end to our journey. These instances just reiterated the need for language when Sophie could not communicate in scary situations. I don’t think either of us got over that near-tragedy for a very long time. I was never so glad to get home, and I suspected Li felt the same.
One afternoon, I set Sophie up in the TV room to watch Mary Poppins, thinking it might work like a speech lesson, as Julie Andrews’ diction was so clear, and I could spend a bit of time with Tom. At one point, I went back to the room to check on her. Her eyes were glued to the screen. I discreetly turned the sound off to see if she would notice. She didn’t even turn her head, just laughed and smiled in the same way. She was reacting to the sight of Dick Van Dyke dancing with the chimney sweeps but hearing no music or dialogue at all. I fled from the room, unable to stop sobbing. What did it matter? She couldn’t hear music. She couldn’t hear me. She couldn’t hear anything!
Two years of hard work and she didn’t recognise the difference between sound and silence. She’d had no response. I could hardly believe it. Through all this time, since that brutal diagnosis two years earlier, I had been getting up early every day, talking all day and all night, seven days a week, full-on, and I’d genuinely believed that Sophie was hearing something. It was like a death blow to see in front of my eyes that she couldn’t hear a thing.
Li was shocked as well but tried to comfort me. ‘We can’t expect too much, darling. You know the microphone doesn’t work with the TV.’ But he understood the realisation I had come to. Despite how much I’d worked with Sophie, she wasn’t getting information from anywhere else but me.
I had to keep going, and I spent time researching what the next best thing was to do for Sophie. Should we keep going with speech therapy, or would it be better to accept that she would never be a part of the hearing world and teach her to sign? What sort of schooling would be right for her, isolated from the hearing world and from us? What about the recently invented cochlear implant, which was still experimental? My mind was in a whirl with all the decisions Li and I would have to make about our daughter’s life. It was as exhausting as it was mind-numbing.
All the while my hands were full with two children, I went on a massive quest to find the best solution for Sophie. Without the benefit of the internet, in those days I relied on word-of-mouth to become informed. I spoke to anyone who had information – parents of deaf children and experts. I researched all the different therapies and looked into sign language. I didn’t know how widely used sign language was in Houston at the time and never saw a single deaf person signing. There were no successful deaf adults around me to talk to about the options as right up to the 1970s, most deaf children in the USA had been institutionalised away from their families. Deep down, I was still determined Sophie would be part of our hearing world, and that she and I would not become strangers. So I decided that we couldn’t contemplate sign language. Not yet, anyway. Part of me still clung to the hope of that moment when we would converse with each other.
Someone had told me about a speech therapist named Linda Daniels who practised the auditory-verbal therapy (AVT) method. She was apparently a passionate trailblazer in her field and quite brilliant – a real dynamo. However, Linda’s approach was criticised by many experts. They thought her methods were too radical and risky, that profound deafness and AVT didn’t mix. But I was intrigued. It made perfect sense to me. While it was all still very new back then, I felt it would be right for Sophie and besides, we had nothing to lose.
I vowed to go and meet Linda. The only problem was that she was based in Dallas, over 385 kilometres away. ‘Darling, if you feel this is something you want to explore, fly to Dallas and see her,’ Li encouraged me. I called Linda and arranged travel to Dallas the following week for two sessions over two days.
I saw straightaway that Linda had a huge personality. She was a tall, dark-haired woman, energetic and forceful, and spoke with a strong, clear Southern drawl. She was confident and believed in her own teaching experience of the AVT approach.
‘I’m so worried that Sophie will never be independent, no matter how hard we try every minute of the day,’ I said to Linda as we got to know each other a bit more. ‘Given her reliance on the FM system, she can’t hear anyone but me.’
‘Don’t worry too much about that for now, Mary. How often do you think you can come to Dallas?’ Linda was getting her diary out.
‘I’ll come as often as it takes. I’ll make it work.’
‘That’s good, Mary. How about we try every three weeks to start with? You can sit in on our sessions, I’ll give you notes and you can continue with the program at home. In fact, you can video the sessions to watch later.’
‘Great, Linda! Thank you!’ I was grateful for her suggestions and I trusted her straightaway.
At one of our first sessions, I apologised for Sophie being lazy because she didn’t pronounce the ends of any of her words.
Linda paused and turned to me. ‘Mary, don’t you think that might be because Sophie can’t hear those frequencies?’
Of course! It clicked for me that Sophie was not in fact lazy. What had I been thinking? How ignorant was I! After all this time, I was still not getting it. I must have appeared crestfallen, because Linda looked at me and said, ‘Mary, Sophie will always be a deaf child in a hearing world. Her hearing is not going to improve. She just has to learn how to navigate the world with this disability.’
This was another ‘light bulb’ moment and it really hit home. I could now conjure a picture of Sophie in a classroom of children, still struggling. That was never going to change. Linda was right about that. I could have felt this was a brutal delivery but coming from Linda it was different. She was on my side and she was teaching me the way forward.
The more Linda told me, the more I understood how difficult it was to teach the English language to a deaf child. She never promised what progress we would make, but she gave me hope. Her knowledge, attitude and obvious skill inspired me. Over time, Linda showed me that Sophie needed to really learn to listen. This was a revelation to me and hopefully would progress her language more quickly.
For the first time since the Mary Poppins incident, I felt I had found the next level of support for Sophie. Never mind the naysayers. Instinctively I felt that Linda was going to be my guiding light.
Dallas became a regular trip for Sophie and me. Eventually a few other families in Houston came on board, which meant Linda could fly to Houston instead. This made her trip worthwhile. The sessions were held in a hotel room.
Often Sophie was exhausted after the kindergarten classes and lessons. She was not yet four and naturally only wanted to play. Sometimes, she would have what I called her ‘dark moments’. She would sit very still, not speaking or making any sound, just looking with those big brown eyes, quite crossly, and refusing to eat or do anything asked of her. Therapy sessions with Linda were no different. At times, Sophie would just sit and glare at Linda with her eyes. And I knew Sophie could glare like that for hours! As I watched her stubborn little face, I’d be thinking, Well, there’s the $120 therapy session gone down the drain . . . as well as the flights to Dallas!