Hello. I'm Monica. I'm 35. I have been Deaf since birth, and American Sign Language is my first language; English is my second, and I'm told I write it better than most people who were born into it, which I take as a compliment and also as a little bit of an insult. My husband Aaron is Deaf too, from a Deaf family going back three generations. Our daughter Lily is five, and she is hearing. She is also the loudest person on our street, which the neighbors confirm. I do prepress at a print shop (I make other people's brochures look right). I started this journal in the summer because so many hearing people ask me the same questions, and because I would rather answer them once, properly, in my own words.

Sunday 26 September

Sunday dinner at my mother's. My mother is hearing. When I was born she did what the doctors told her in 1964, which was to not sign with me, so that I would "learn to speak." I was five before anyone gave me a language. I went to the Deaf school and came home on weekends and taught my mother the signs for DINNER and BATHROOM and I LOVE YOU. That is still about where she is. She fingerspells slowly, with her tongue between her teeth.

So now my mother has a hearing grandchild, and I think it is the happiest I have ever seen her. I mean that. She and Lily talk and talk. Lily tells her about kindergarten and my mother laughs out loud, and I watch them the way I have always watched hearing people talk: like a window with the sound off.

Tonight, over the pot roast, my mother said something to Lily and Lily turned to me and signed, GRANDMA SAYS YOU LOOK TIRED. And I signed back, TELL GRANDMA SHE CAN TELL ME HERSELF. And Lily, who is five and completely fearless, said it out loud. Word for word.

My mother put her fork down. Then she looked at me and she fingerspelled, very slowly, T-I-R-E-D. And I laughed, and she laughed, and then for some reason we both had to look at the gravy boat for a while.

That was dinner. It was a good one.

Thursday 23 September

New TV season report, from the captions' point of view.

Last night we watched the new show about the White House staff, the one on NBC. The captions did their best. Those people talk so fast and walk so fast that the white box was stacked three lines deep for the whole hour and I felt like I was speed-reading a novel on a treadmill. Aaron gave up and went to make popcorn. I liked it. I'm going to tape it next week so I can pause.

Tonight Friends came back, captioned perfectly, as usual. Sitcoms are easy. Somebody says something, then there's a laugh, and the captions tell you [LAUGHTER] just in case you were wondering if it was funny.

The local news is the real comedy. They caption what's on the teleprompter, so the anchors are fine. But when the weatherman starts ad-libbing with the sports guy, the captions simply stop. Nothing. A man waving at a map of Lake Ontario in total silence. Lily, sitting on the rug with her crayons, will look up and interpret the weather for me without being asked. He says it's going to be cold. He says he likes the Bills. Which brings me to something I wrote about Monday, below.

Monday 20 September

On Saturday at the bank, the teller had a question about a deposit, and instead of writing it on a slip of paper like I asked her to, she leaned over the counter and asked Lily. "Honey, can you tell your mommy that the check has a hold on it?"

And Lily, proud as anything, stood on her toes and signed it to me. Then the teller told Lily about how many days, and the fee, and Lily signed that too, and got the number of days wrong, and looked up at me with her face getting pinched and worried because she could tell it mattered and she didn't understand it.

She's five. She should not be in charge of my bank account.

I know hearing people think it's cute. I know they think they're being nice, talking to the one they can talk to. But I know grown CODAs who spent their childhoods translating the landlord and the doctor and the man from the gas company, and every one of them says the same thing: I grew up too early.

So last night Aaron and I sat down with Lily and made a rule. Lily can sign all she wants. She can tell anyone she likes that her mommy and daddy are Deaf. She can show off. But Lily is not the interpreter. If a grown-up wants to tell Mommy something, the grown-up can write it down, or wait, or learn. Lily's job is to be five.

She thought about it and signed, OKAY. BUT THE WEATHER? And I said the weather is fine. She can keep the weather.

Friday 17 September

Lily read the word STOP on a stop sign out loud and signed it at the same time, with both hands, very firmly, like a crossing guard. Two languages at once. Going to bed happy.

Tuesday 14 September

Parent meeting at the school tonight, and we had an interpreter. I want that written down, because it took three tries.

Try one: I wrote a note in August asking for an interpreter for the kindergarten parents' night. No answer. Try two: I called the office through the relay. The secretary said (the operator typed it word for word, bless her), "Oh, can't Lily just tell you what's going on?" I typed back that Lily is five and cannot yet tie her shoes or explain a school budget. GA. There was a long pause on the green screen. Then: "I'll check with the principal. GA." Try three: Aaron wrote a letter, very polite, and used the words "Americans with Disabilities Act." The interpreter was confirmed two days later.

And then she was wonderful. A young woman, quick hands, dressed in dark colors the way good interpreters do so you can see the signs. Aaron and I sat in the tiny chairs with our knees up by our ears and understood every single word the teacher said, for the first time in our lives at a school meeting. When my mother sat through my meetings, she would tell me afterward, "They said you're doing fine."

The only trouble: the teacher kept looking at the interpreter instead of at us. Every time, the interpreter would gently point at me, as if to say, she's over there. By the end of the hour the teacher had it. She looked right at me and asked if I had questions. I asked six. Aaron says I asked six because I've been saving them up since 1969.

Wednesday 8 September

First day of kindergarten. Lily wore the red sneakers with the lights in the heels and refused to let me brush her hair more than twice.

At the door, the teacher crouched down and said something to her. Lily said something back and pointed at me, and the teacher looked up at me with a surprised face. Later I asked Lily what she'd said. She said: "I told her my mommy talks with her hands, and my daddy does too, and I can do both, and she can't." Which is one hundred percent true and also the kind of thing you probably should not say to your teacher on the first day.

After I dropped her off, I sat in the car in the parking lot for ten minutes. The house was so still when I got back. In our house the doorbell is a light, the phone is a light, the smoke alarm is a strobe, and my alarm clock shakes the bed. Lily is the only noise, and I don't even hear her. I feel her, running on the floorboards. Today the floor was quiet all morning.

Monday 23 August

Some statistics from my day, for the hearing readers.

Relay calls I made to register Lily for school, schedule her physical, and fix a mistake on our cable bill: 5.
Times the hearing person hung up on the relay operator as soon as she started saying "Hello, this is the relay service with a call from a Deaf person," because they thought it was a sales call: 2.
Times I had to call back and start over: 2.
Minutes spent on hold, reading my TTY screen, which just says (RECORDING PLAYING) and (MUSIC): I stopped counting at 40.

Then I went to work, where I did all my business with customers by e-mail, and nobody knew a thing about my ears, and it was lovely.

Wednesday 11 August

First entry. Let me tell you why I love the Internet.

There's a cartoon from The New Yorker a few years back: a dog at a computer telling another dog, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." I have it taped to my monitor at work. On the Internet nobody knows you're Deaf. Or rather, they can know if you tell them, but it doesn't change anything, because we're all just typing.

For most of my life, every conversation with a hearing person was work for me and patience for them. Now I e-mail my clients and my sister and the people at the bank, and it's even. My sister Beth has written me more in the last two years than she said to me in the twenty before, and she lives twelve miles away. At night Aaron and I sit at the computer in the spare room and send ICQ messages to Deaf friends in Seattle and Austin and Washington, D.C., and nobody needs an operator in the middle.

My mother says the computer is going to ruin my eyes. My mother has been worried about my eyes since 1964. They're doing a lot of the work around here.