Ninety percent of the children of deaf adults have normal hearing. More than 60 percent of these children use American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate with their parents. They must become bilingual, using both spoken English and ASL to serve as a bridge between their parents and the hearing world. They have to accept responsibility early in life.
Myron Uhlberg, author of “Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love,” was 6 years old when he began interpreting for his parents.
Hearing people often communicate with the child and ignore the deaf parent, creating stress between the deaf parents and their hearing child. The child is subject to constant transitions between acting as the liaison, but then returning to the accepted behavior as a child when their interpreting services are not needed for a while. Ignorant derogatory comments made about their parents by neighbors or people on the street can be part of everyday life. A telephone rings, someone knocks on the door, and the hearing child must leap into action.
Such is the context for Uhlberg’s sensitive and tender story of his role in his family with two deaf parents and a hearing brother with epilepsy. Many days saw him caring for all three, helping them get through their day. His parents were commendable in their struggles to have a regular life. His exceptionally loving and caring father had his union card and a steady job as a linotype operator with the New York Daily News, where he worked for his entire professional career.
The focus of this memoir is on what powerful storytellers Uhlberg’s father Lou’s hands were, and on the love of this charming, ingenuous man for his first son. “At the end of his workday he would drop to his knees when he saw me, and hold me close, as if I had been lost, then found.”
Listening to the radio in 1938 as the great boxer Joe Louis knocked Max Schmeling down for the count, cheering as Jackie Robinson led the Brooklyn Dodgers to a 1947 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals, Myron’s dad set an example for his son by supporting heroic athletes, no matter what their origin might be.
Buying a new suit for his boy at Macy’s, taking his boy to the Daily News and introducing him to his co-workers, going fishing without catching anything, taking the family to the local Chinese restaurant for lunch on a Saturday afternoon, getting his son a library card, taking his family to Coney Island, reading World War II news to his family (in sign), trying unsuccessfully to help his son earn a merit badge as a Boy Scout, arranging his son’s bar mitzvah in 1946, clowning at family gatherings — Lou Uhlberg was a colorful and determined father, even though everything was many times more difficult for him than for a hearing person.
There are many descriptions of ASL words here, and especially the elegantly expressive ones that Lou Uhlberg would sign. Uhlberg explains how his mother’s signing could be wonderfully enthusiastic and energetic, how ASL can have regional dialects, and how crucially essential ASL was to the parents’ existence and stability. The pictorial power of ASL is contrasted with the plainness of the spoken word.
“Words like ‘war’ and ‘battles’, and ‘army’, and ‘shell’, and ‘bomb’ were just words to me, as were wounded and dead. But when my father’s expressive hands turned these words into sign, they came alive. In the movement of his hands, I could see the fall of bombs, the flight of shells, and the movement of vast armies; I could hear the cries of the wounded and (know) the stillness of death.”
Myron Uhlberg has written a number of children’s books, including “Flying Over Brooklyn,” “Mad Dog McGraw,” “Lemuel the Fool,” “The Printer,” “Dad, Jackie, and Me” and “A Storm Called Katrina.” Search for Myron Uhlberg on YouTube to hear him describing his life.
