There Was Love
I was born deaf, but it wasn't discovered until months later.
Looking at photographs from those early days, I sometimes wonder what my parents were thinking.
They were holding a baby they loved completely.
A baby who looked healthy, content and full of possibility.
At that point, they didn't yet know what lay ahead.
They didn't know the appointments, the questions, the learning, or how much their understanding of Deafness would be asked to change.
They were still living in the space between knowing and not knowing.
And there is something strange about looking back at that now.
Because I know what they didn't.
I know the Deaf child in that photograph would grow into a Deaf adult.
I know there would be experiences none of us could see yet.
Questions of language, identity, belonging and access were still somewhere in the future.
But when I look at this photograph, those aren't the first things I see.
I see the closeness.
I see a family holding their baby before anyone had given them a label, an expectation or an idea of what her future might look like.
That doesn't erase everything that came afterwards.
Love alone could not provide all the understanding or access I would need.
But it was there before any of us knew what was coming.
Before understanding.
Before labels.
Before the future had been explained to us.
There was love.
And that is part of the story too.
