Interview with my deaf grandmother!

I interviewed my grandmother several months ago about her experiences as a deaf person growing up in a different time than it is for us deaf youngsters. I thought her answers were really interesting and she has such cute stories that she adds. Hope you enjoy.

Where and when were you born?
Nova Scotia, 1932

Were there any deaf members in your immediate family [excluding me of course]?
No, but rumor was my granny (my father's Mother) seemed slightly hard of hearing and often answering-EH! and usually comments to her were repeated often. She was deaf in her old age and died at 91. Although my cousin Eddie in NS. (my mom's nephew) has a grand-daughter who lost her hearing very young around 2 yrs of age from meningitis, and is around 12 or so yrs of age now.

How old were you when your parents realized you were deaf & how did they realize that?
Parents noticed a change in me after I had my tonsils & adenoids removed at 3 1/2 but did not associate it with the operation. I'd always told people I couldn't hear good since the operation & thought people were playing games with me by whispering. Then at 7 yrs of age, I went to regular school (convent) for grades 1 & 2, but the sister (nun) kept moving me from the back to the middle, finally the 1st desk in front, so she guessed I couldn't hear well.

One day when I was 9 years old, I was making mud pies under my neighbour's tree. Her visitor who was a teacher of the deaf came up behind me talking until she was next to me & I was startled & jumped & she nodded & may have been in touch with my parents, later. Probably the whole village guessed I didn't hear well.

What did your parents decide to do once you were deaf?
So to find out for sure, my Father took me to an ear Doctor for tests. The Dr. stood behind me and talking in a normal voice asked whats 4 x 2 =? and i didn't hear or couldn't make out what he said. He kept raising his voice until I was able to give answers to the sums. He said Yes, she is hearing impaired and thought it was on-going and I'd probably been very slowly losing my hearing all along gradually that nobody noticed and probably the operation helped move it along a bit more and it was now noticeable.

In September, I went by train with the teacher to the school for the Deaf in Halifax, Nova Scotia. as a boarder in 1941 and arrived at night while the kiddies, ages 6-10 were sleeping in their dorm. The school matron showed me my bed, and noticing I was hesitant to undress, turned her back to me to give me privacy and I undressed so fast my clothes were practically flying everywhere and got into my pyjamas before you could blink an eye.

What did you think of the deaf students at the school when you first got there?

Next morning a deaf teen (mother) woke me up with a gesture & a smile---"up". I saw all the other kids had a "mother", too. They helped dress the very small ones and we were led to the bathroom. Then downstairs to our large sitting room full of tables, chairs shelves of toys, books, and games till it was time (not a long wait) to go down another floor (basement level) to the large dining room , We filed down the stairs beginning with the smallest child and ended with the tallest ones.

Once there, I found more girls, pre-teens and older teens who had dorms a floor above our dorm. So far no one talked to me yet then I noticed the children waving their hands, while smiling and making gestures but not talking. I thought to my self, they can't talk. Hmm! I pondered over that and saw they would tap each other for attention and realized they could not hear either and thought ohhh, I'm in the wrong school, still not realizing I myself was deaf too.

I thought the teacher who brought me there made a mistake and Mom & Dad don't know. Wait until I tell them, and they will arrange to move me to the right school, not realizing I won't see them until the end of June. But I was not upset, just curious and watched and before I knew it not even a month I understood them and was communicating in sign language myself. I was happy & having fun on the large swings, slides, sled coasting on the very steep hills in winter plus the skating rink. It's true that children learn & adjust or adapt to new situations & languages fast. Meanwhile I met 3 girls my age just like me with some hearing and we talked and signed together with the other children, but they lived in the city and went home on the weekends.

How was it when you would visit your family during summers?

In June, going home with my uncle and aunt by car for 2 months visit that 1st year, I was not sure if I could just walk in so I knocked on the front door, while they waited in the car. No answer, I looked back at them not wanting them to leave yet, just in case. I knocked again,& my Mom opened the door, smiled happily saying come in and called out to 2 of my sisters near my age, come say Hello to her. She's been away a long time & the older had to be coaxed.

Life at home was not the same as before I went away. so I was shy of them. The younger sister, by 1 & 1/2 yrs and I played together with no problem and the older one talked more to her & was resentful because I went to boarding school, as she was into reading children's novels one titled "Nancy goes to Boarding School", and the story was exciting so she thinks parents favor me, forgetting it's for deaf children.

It did make life a little tough for me, for example they took turns spinning the skipping rope, & jumping. I was allowed to only turn the rope, no skipping yet but with promises I'll have a chance next turn, then told No, next time again & again until I screamed with frustration after turning the rope like almost an hour which wasn't fun as I never got to skip.

What are your few most favorite memories about the school you attended?

The Easter, xmas & valentine parties where boys & girls mingled & the 1st time I ever tasted delicious Christmas plum pudding, as once in a while during the war years, lots of us didn't go home for Xmas. That 1st year we gathered in the gym room to see piles of boxes from Santa on the stage. Each of us was called and when my name came up I went up and received a large parcel from Santa (Mom & Dad). On opening it, found toys, books, games and some clothes.

Also fondly remember one evening weekly cooking & baking classes & we got to eat everything when done that evening. Entered at age 14, the Hobby show with all schools in the city and I won a trophy, 1st prize, senior girl's champion 1946 for my baking, sewing and weaving. with the most points. Still have it but minus one handle.

Us young teens in a group of 8 or 10, huddled around a hot radiator in the sitting room and made up scary, spooky stories. The best one was from Dolly, a coloured girl, who made us so scared about ghosts, booing, sweeping, brushing past out faces while lunging at us with threatening looks... we would jump & snuggle together.

Being invited to a free movie at a local theatre or to the arena to watch Barbara Ann Scott skating. One xmas we were invited by a couple to their large house and we saw tracks & tracks of trains with blinking lights and all the works and the wife treated us to hot cocoa and cookies.

Me being crowned queen of the costume & skating competion in the school back yard. I dressed as hawaiian and made a grass skirt from an old potato sack, & one of the supervisors let me use some of her dark pancake makeup. and I had my picture taken. which I still have. We also had to show our skating skills while in our costumes round and round the school rink . I was about16 yrs old.

were the teachers at the school deaf as well?

The teachers were all hearing except Donald a former pupil who taught printing & shoe repairing to the boys after school hours We girls had a deaf sewing teacher who taught us to make clothes, darn socks (every Monday, when brought up from the laundry room) all belonging to the boys. and we made a fuss about them smelling if we came across a certain boy we were not fond of, (names were sewn in). also knitting. Plus a selected few including myself were chosen to learn to weave under another hearing teacher at a certain age, around 14.

Donald started teaching the slightly slower pupils in sign language only, as the hearing teachers couldn't quite reach them, and did a super job. The rest of us had oral instructions and lip read in classes & at other times blackboard writing.

Oh wow I never knew you went to an oral school, i always assumed you were taught in sign language instead of orally.

The aim or goal was to teach speech i think. so they had to hear the child using the speech sounds, then words in order to coach and correct them, during the first couple of years. Some children did learn to talk eventually, (but I'm pretty sure they could hear a tiny bit enough to pick up sounds, but not able to learn to talk by themselves).

Also the teachers used special effects and drawings of the head showing how the tongue is placed when making L, the, f and so on & how to blow on a feather, and placing of hands on throats, etc. It was done over and over until they got the right sound. Of course some children at deaf school never did learn speech but others did.

Donald, the deaf teacher's pupils were mostly bright but very poor lip readers or simply harder to teach. Maybe the hearing teachers were not expected to learn sign language before they were hired or knew how but were too slow or awkward.. Anyway the kids lipread pretty well and the teachers did not speak too fast and often wrote on the blackboard.

What did you do after you graduated?

After I graduated, my Father would not let me stay in the city and work at Moir's Chocolate Factory. In those days you had to be 21 before you could lead your own life. So I went back home & within 2 months I decided to work at the Woolen Mill where they had automatic weaving looms, but the manager was afraid to let a deaf person operate them as we would not hear when a problem started, also had automatic wool carding and spool winders, etc. But they wanted me to weave samples on a small hand weaving loom before a design was selected for the automatic looms. One time it was khaki for army uniforms. Another time a beautiful creamy yellow material of a lovely design was selected and cut and sewn together into a princess style coat and the Town presented it to the present Queen Elizabeth (back then, Princess Elizabeth & husband Prince Philip) when they visited our town after leaving Halifax, by train around 1951.

In between & more often I mended the materials after they were woven on the big machines.The rolls of cloth were put on 2 pulleys or bars and I would look them over until I came across a section that lost a thread which could be anywhere from a few inches to a couple of yards, studied the patterns and wove in the missing threads by hand using a large needle.

When we moved away to another town, I worked at the local bakery that made assorted cookies also chocolate mallows and even bread in another section down the hall, I worked like Lucille Ball did in her comedy, packing the cookies in a box except I did a great job and mine did not fall over the edge to a box below. I let some go because they were already broken.. They were packed quickly and easily by using both hands and pushing lets say 8 or 10 together like in a row and lifted that up by pressing hard and placed in the boxes. Sometimes we put boxes together and ready for packing.

We moved again and the only job I found was as a Mother's Helper with a lovely family. She treated me like a younger sister, having only brothers. While there, I bought a typewriter & took a typist course through correspondence school from a Vancouver University, and practiced in the evenings. I was graded by mail and a local high school graduate was appointed to time my word typing speed with a clock under her eye when she gave me the go ahead. Years later, it came in handy as I worked on key-punch jobs. (now called Data entry)

Two yrs later I went to Halifax & got a job hand weaving Nova Scotia tartans, mainly 12 lady's scarves or 10 men's scarves a day.

What were some of the frustrations you experienced while trying to fit in the hearing world?

I felt left out of circles, sometimes, I was shy anyway. People usually talked past me unless it was comments applied to me, but I always kept busy embroidering, reading, knitting, even sketching. My Mom always said I was an artist, but I did not pursue it, and of course I day-dreamed a lot. Felt lonely at times until I started going to dances with Marie a fellow worker at the wollen mill, who became a good friend, and I was always asked for a dance, polka, jive, swing and waltz.

Then my 2 sisters asked if they could come, 1st time for them. We went on both Fridays & Saturdays to the IODE one night and the Fire Hall the next night. It was fun to dance and socialize.

How old were you when hearing aids became available for deaf people?

While I attended the deaf school a brother and his sister arrived around 1945 & both wearing hearing aids. They were not slim and narrow like the ones of today or behind the ear, and the ear molds were hard. We called them rich kids because they could afford them.

One day my father came home from visiting his mom & said Granny bought you a hearing aid. It had long wires that got in my way. I carried it my pocket but the cacophony of sound was disturbing as I had no instructions and probably had it set too high. I could hear my own breathing, and footsteps sounded like elephants marching. The crackle of clothes moving & the breeze blowing on my hair near the hearing aid made sounds like Whoosh which drowned out the words when people spoke.

I found if I carried it in my hand it was better.One day we were on our way to the circus and a girl stared and asked what's is she carrying and was told it's an aid to help me hear more, and she was fascinated and asked me if I knew what they were saying, I answered yes, from the right ear only. We were still 2 blocks from the fair and I said I hear music and they told me it was from the circus. I wore it for a while until the battery went dead and could not find any in town at that time so the hearing aid ended in the drawer until we could order some batteries and was forgotten. I was around 14 yrs old then. I believe it went missing some how and I never wore it again, may be a young sibling played with it as we were a large family.

Bought 2 behind the ear aids when I was 24 and married. I found them a bit bulky and heavy. and they did not seem to work any better than the one I had yrs before. and after a while stopped using them too.

By the time I was around 35 and deafer and self conscious about misunderstanding many words and giving wrong answers like this joke "oh, you have new hearing aids, What kind is it? and the answer goes, "it's 2 o clock" Oops! I was truly ready for hearing aids and bought them and they were the best ever to come on the market and by 1983 traded them in for slimmer ones, same brand, When they wore out, bought another set, in 1998, in grey to match my hair.

How about your age when you got closed captioning?

For me, closed captioning was discovered around 1983. That was the beginning of my addiction to T.V. Hardly watched it before as I got so frustrated. My family got their 1st black and white set around 1954. It seemed to me they kept it at a whisper. Later when I first saw Elvis Presley, I wished the music was louder, but it was quite muted. and the only time I watched anything, it had lots of action. So when CC came out I enjoyed tv more, watched what my grand daughters liked, then later All my children soap opera and I was hooked, soon along came old rerun movies with added cc's which I could enjoy more than when shown years before.

Even with hearing aids, I need cc and always lip reading but some words are not clear when people talk to me so they have to spell the word especially on the phone or re-phrase them. It's hard work, so you struggle and feel personal distress. Some time people think I only hear when I want to which is wrong. Often I have to really concentrate if they slur their words or talk a mile a minute.

how old were you when you got your first TTD/TTY?

Hmm! I believe I got my minicom not long after I discovered CC. in the early 80's, It's a great way to communicate with other deaf people.. One day I would like a better one with built in printer that holds a roll of paper, great to check what the other person said at the other end after a long conversation for answers or when not able to remember what was said. but then maybe it is probably better just to use a computer nowadays, if person at the other end has one and using MSN.


How do you feel about sign language?

When one of my sisters watched my deaf grand daughter age 9 [me aka zoee] at that time and I communicate together on & on in signed english and I was saying each word also, so my sister would not be left out, she asked Do you actually have that many signs & I said sure, practically every word in the dictionary. It is definitely not just "Me Jane and You Tarzan", She was so impressed, even more so when my younger hearing 7 yr old grand daughter signed expertly too. Their mother urged every one to use Signed English and oral speech together for the deaf child's benefit. It's the reason to-day she is so fluent in english be it signed or written & clever besides.

[side note: Zoee here - I have to say that i don't think the fact that i signed in Signed English is the reason why i am fluent in English. Sure it didn't hurt, but I think I owe a lot of it to reading books, really [i was a total bookworm!], and i think i would be just as fluent if i was raised using ASL. But my grandma is old-fashioned and well that's just the way she thinks :) ]

The sign language in my time was MSL (Maritime Sign Language), with a blend of ASL and lots of finger spelling. The syntax of this language word order was subject, object then verb, when communicating with other deaf people. But there were some who used english when talking to a hearing person.

We were not self conscious about signing at all, and my younger sister and I used finger spelling as a secret code so no one knew what we said or just to show off! which was fun.
But in some small towns lately, I noticed some deaf people in a store using only a few gestures half hidden so as not to attract attention. In big cities in the east they are more open about it. Although I think the best place to use sign language is out in B.C. where the deaf are truly loved and accepted without question, it seems to me. And people eagerly take courses in sign language. I feel proud to sign in public

When or if somebody says they speak 2 languages, I mention I can also, which are signing and deaf/blind (finger spelling) on their hands. There were 2 deaf/blind girls with us at Deaf School besides a 3rd deaf/blind woman past middle age who lived there permanently year round. In the summer she had friends or relatives who had her for the summer months at their homes.
She spent a lot of time knitting. Once she made snuggie bloomers in a green color to keep warm in winter months when out doors. A school matron taught her and always fixed her dropped stitches.

That poor woman had a forehead full of permanent lumps and new bruises , caused by us girls when running and shoving the heavy steel door outward to run up or down the stairs, not knowing she's sometimes on the other side, feeling for the handle to open it on her way to the sitting room. Gosh, the guilt I felt when I did it once and never shoved the door again. I was more cautious as I just ached for her.She would clutch her head and cry & cry. Oh My! that was awful.


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And of course that's how she ended the interview! Ha! :) You can see how my grandma loves to talk about her memories, and always would mention little cute stories here and there. This interview really reminded me of all these years of listening to my grandma tell me stories about her past in signed English. I adored listening to her stories!