FAMILY CHARADES: GROWING UP WITH A DEAF SISTER

FAMILY CHARADES: GROWING UP WITH A DEAF SISTER
Friday, June 7, 2024 by LINDA SAMMARITAN

Categories: Friday's Fiction / GUEST AUTHORS

PLEASE WELCOME

LINDA SAMMARITAN

FICTION FRIDAY

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

REACHING INTO SILENCE

In all my years of teaching elementary and middle school, whenever the subject of my childhood came up, students would ask, “What was it like to grow up with a deaf sister?

“Pretty much like growing up with any sister,” I would reply. Then I’d grin and say, “We played charades a lot.”

Those conversations became the seed of my middle-grade fiction series, World Without Sound.

Today, when we consider the deaf population, we know most people have learned sign language, and many hearing family members also learn ASL. Not so back in the sixties. Deaf children were expected to learn oral language. Educators instructed parents not to use any hand motions but to force their children to read lips.

How does a child recognize words on lips when they don’t even know what a word is? They have no vocabulary. They only observe behaviors. There are no word labels attached to those behaviors. No wonder deaf children were reduced to temper tantrums when no one understood them. Even today, those early years are tough for both kids and parents.

My family went along with the “no sign language” rule, we resorted to all kinds of gestures and tools to communicate with my sister. By the time she was two, she understood numbers one though ten because I taught her with manipulatives and playing cards. My brothers and I used picture dictionaries to teach her words. We acted out scenes of things that happened during the day, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic.

Although the series is fiction, many of those charade episodes are based on what we really experienced.

Book One, Reaching Into Silence, covers the first two years of Krista’s life as parents and doctors try to figure out why the baby doesn’t babble or crawl. Book Two, Dancing in the Silence, follows the family to California and back while Dad, a fighter pilot, trains for Vietnam. And Book Three, Speaking Through the Silence, is the search for a school to help their deaf child communicate. Narrated by the older sister, Debbie, not only do readers get a sense of how the handicapped were treated in that era, they also get an up close and personal view of anti-war sentiments. Throughout all three books, Debbie is growing up, from the first awareness of a hostile world outside of the safety of her family, through the teen angst of peer pressure, and emerging into a compassionate young adult.

MORE ABOUT REACHING INTO SILENCE

The rubella epidemic of 1964-65. The Vietnam War.

Both converge on twelve-year-old Debbie when her sister is born with disabilities and her father may be flying into danger.

Labeled as a “rubella baby,” Debbie’s sister Krista is born blind in one eye and with a hole in her heart. Although she survives risky open-heart surgery, months pass, and she doesn’t babble or crawl like most babies do. Doctors decide the Krista is cognitively challenged—she’ll never be able to learn—and they advise her parents to put her in an institution. Just forget about her and raise their three “normal” kids.

Not on Debbie’s watch. She’s sure Krista is deaf, but no one will believe a kid.

Along with all the medical drama, Debbie must deal with problems at school—best friends who move away, mean girls who don’t, bullies, and boyfriends. Refusing to give in to self-pity, she soldiers on as Krista’s champion.

However, Debbie’s optimism falters when her father’s next orders will send him to the war in Vietnam. Can she hang tough for her mother, keep helping Krista, and prepare for life without Dad, possibly forever?

ABOUT LINDA SAMMARITAN

Linda Sammaritan writes realistic fiction, mostly for kids ages ten to fourteen. She has completed a middle grade trilogy, World Without Sound, based on her own experiences growing up with a deaf sister. Book One, Reaching Into Silence, was a 2023 Carol Awards semi-finalist, an ACFW Genesis Contest semi-finalist, and a First Impressions Finalist. Book Two, Dancing in the Silence, is a 2024 Carol Award Finalist.

A wife, mother of three, and grandmother of eight, Linda regales the youngest grandchildren with “Nona Stories,” tales of her childhood. Maybe one day those stories will be in picture books!

Where Linda can be found on the web:

www.lindasammaritan.com

www.facebook.com/lindasammaritan

www.twitter.com/LindaSammaritan

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