At this age, Sophie was mostly happy to come home from school and answer basic questions, but other times she refused to listen or talk. ‘Sophie, don’t shut me out,’ I’d say. ‘I’m just trying to help you.’
‘Mummm, I’m jus’ tire’. I don’ wan’ talk any more.’ She would take off her implant and retreat to her bedroom.
Conversely, there were times when I thought Sophie was the wisest one in our family – especially the time I really let myself down as a mother. Tom was about to go on school camp to Tasmania and Li was away at a friend’s country property for the weekend to concentrate on his writing, hoping to finish the first draft of his manuscript by the end of the year. Sometimes I thought he was never going to finish it – he’d already done 500 000 words, which was four times more than Penguin actually needed. It seemed that once he’d started opening up, he just couldn’t stop.
This particular morning I had to get Tom to the airport very early. I decided I’d quietly sneak away with him. I’d be gone an hour, max. Sophie would be there to look after her not yet five-year-old sister. Bridie would be safe with her when they both woke up. Well, I should have known better. I was on my way home when I received a call from a very angry Sophie.
‘What?’ I yelled into the car phone. ‘Calm down, Sophie. I can’t understand you!’
‘Bridie ran ’way, Mum! Police here!’ she screamed.
God, I nearly crashed the car then, and had to pull over while Sophie did her best to explain to me what had happened. Apparently, Bridie had heard the door close as I left. She got up and somehow managed to reach up to open the door and run out of the house, hoping to catch us in the car. She continued on a couple of blocks all the way up to Fitzroy Street – well known for sex workers, drug addicts and homeless people – where she got picked up by two patrolling police officers.
‘Police in my bedroom, Mum! Bridie crying! It’s scary. Don’ dare do that again!’
‘I’m on my way home and we’ll sort it out,’ I said. ‘Is Bridie okay?’
‘Yes! Where were you? What you thinking?!’
‘Sophie . . .’
‘Stop! You’re crazy, Mum!’ She cut me off and slammed the phone down.
When I got home, the girls were curled up on the sofa together. Bridie looked worn out, her face all puffy, and Sophie just glared at me before recounting the rest of the episode. A distraught Bridie had led the two police officers back to our house and woken Sophie, which scared her as she had no idea why they were in her bedroom. After she’d connected her implant, she was able to take control of the situation. She relayed her name and age and assured the police that all was fine. The worst bit was that they told her in no uncertain terms that if Sophie had been under thirteen, they would have had to take both girls into custody immediately as they were considered too young to be left alone.
So there we had it. A near miss for Bridie and a wake-up call for me. It left me pretty shaken. Bridie was terrified afterwards so we didn’t scold her too much. She stayed glued to me for the rest of the year.
At least Li had almost finished writing his bloody book, thank God – he’d produced 680 000 words! ‘Julie told me it’s enough, Mary,’ he said towards the end of the year. ‘She said we can make a beautiful book out of what I’ve written.’
He sounded relieved and excited. I felt the same. He’ll be the family man once again, I thought.
I was dreading Sophie’s transition to high school, as I knew secondary schools didn’t like parents being too involved, and I would have to educate a teacher for each subject instead of just one classroom teacher. Would they be on board with Sophie’s needs? It would be so hard to monitor. It made me feel tired just thinking about it.
Then something delightful happened to end Sophie’s primary school years on a high. ‘Mum, the school wan’ me to stan’ up and speak at church,’ she told me one afternoon. She looked really happy.
‘Darling, fantastic!’ said Li. ‘Show me your speech.’
For the next couple of weeks, Sophie practised and practised her phrasing, pronunciation and intonation. ‘Don’t be afraid to look up at the audience from time to time to make a connection,’ Li said. ‘And take a deep breath before you start.’
Li and I took Sophie to St Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne’s CBD. We sat with her near the front. She seemed both excited and a bit tense. Then the service began. As we sat nervously in the front pew, we were in awe of Sophie as she walked up to the podium to speak in front of hundreds of people. Her face was calm and she read with great clarity. She looked up a couple of times and paused in the right places, and her voice was beautiful with lovely intonation. The whole audience was captivated.
After dinner that night, Li and I were still on a high. ‘Li, did you ever imagine that Sophie would be able to do this?’ I asked him.
‘No.’ He shook his head. We were over the moon with what Sophie had done that day and how she was doing now. We knew too well how long and hard this journey had been for her, for me and for us as a family. It was a small but important breakthrough, one of those special moments that made all the hard work worth it for everyone, especially Sophie.
Moving up into senior school in February meant a massive adjustment for Sophie and me. It soon became clear that she didn’t like the academic side of life, not at all, and who could blame her? Her vocabulary had increased but she had a lot of syntax errors in her speech and therefore the quality of her writing was weak. The teachers were fabulous, but keeping up with the chatter of her peers was now even harder for her. ‘Sorry, what you say?’ Sophie would ask. Mostly girls replied with, ‘Don’t worry. It wasn’t important.’ But it was. Because she could only pick up part of a sentence, she couldn’t find her way into the conversations. This was never going to be easy.
At least she still had her dancing. Miss Anna suggested she add tap and jazz, which expanded her friendship group and became the highlight of her week. She became a very good jazz and tap dancer, but she got so busy with the extra dancing that something had to give and she told me, ‘Mum, I’m too busy. No more piano.’
I continued to wonder if we’d made a mistake in not allowing Sophie to learn Australian Sign Language, called Auslan. Now that she was a teenager, I had developed a new fear for her. Like all teenagers, she would no doubt become more concerned about her looks, and refuse to wear the bulky implant processor in its chest harness. Realistically, this was a high probability. Then we would have no way to communicate at all. And if I couldn’t communicate with my daughter, never have that conversation that I’d yearned for all these years, this would break me.
Then we heard there was an upgrade to the implant technology. Sophie was given a behind-the-ear processor for the first time, so she wouldn’t have to wear the harness ever again. She was overjoyed. She could now hide the processor under her hair, and for the first time there was no lumpy device under her shirt or leotard.
Around the middle of the year, Louise called and told me that there was going to be a trial for a new generation of deaf children to be implanted in the second ear. This piqued my interest. Louise was working at the Bionic Ear Institute and had heard about a research project with a second implant that should help directionality. Louise believed it would be beneficial for Sophie. What an opportunity! Two implants would be better than one, I felt sure.