My father is Deaf, and everyday I live the life you did not give him. Everyday I communicate in my first language in the classroom, with friends, at work, and at home. When I was but a child, having failed my hearing test, you spoke words I will never know into my unresponsive ear after my parents told you I am profoundly Deaf. You voice the words, “She will learn just as her father did” to my hearing mother, making her interpret the false words to my dad as he looks to his daughter playing with toys or, more likely, reading a book. “She will learn just as her father did,” you tell my parents, even after they detail their logical plan for a bilingual approach. You say this to my dad, failed by oralist teachers. Failed by them like so many other Deaf children put through the system while their parents hung on the slim hope that one day, never mind the loss of critical early exposure to language, that one day, their children could be just like them.

In the third grade, I realized I could write better than my dad. My brilliant dad, who can create the most complicated MC Escher drawings, design beautiful architecture, and even make his own anniversary gifts with handmade jewelry. I was too young to understand why then, but I now know that none of this is his fault. He was born into an ignorant family who had no idea how to best raise a Deaf child. He now no longer wears his hearing aids or any other hearing doohickey and is raising two Deaf girls who cannot speak a complete sentence except for “Mom” but can sign thousands of words. Even after his Deaf children experienced success after success, his parents never learned so much as the alphabet before they both died.

The only people in my extended family who sign are ironically all from my hearing mother’s side, not my Deaf father’s side. The older my sister and I got, the more our vocabulary expanded while our relatives remained stuck at the alphabet and a few basic signs. The more I wanted to share, the more we resorted to a pen and paper or activities that did not require direct communication like miniature golf, the beach, and card games. How could I fingerspell enlightened conversations with my uncle, a philosophy professor? My aunt, who belongs on Saturday Night Live, made everyone at the table laugh, but jokes are not as funny when delivered moments later on a crumpled-up napkin. Of my three cousins, two are now old enough and have tired of the novelty of fingerspelling. My youngest cousin once told the family that her favorite part of our family vacation was “talking to Maggie”, and I dread the day when she stops writing back and forth with me.

Are you all satisfied with superficial information on what classes I’m taking and my lack of a romantic life? Do you not want to get to know my sister and myself, ask us what we think about climate change or the presidential elections? What is stopping hearing relatives from learning how to sign? It is no easy task learning an entirely new language, but how can you stand by, talk over our heads, tell us to “hold on” when we pass you notes, and still call us family?

What breaks my heart is that my sister and myself are actually one of the luckier Deaf people. I see the hurt in my dad’s eyes when he struggles to grieve over the deaths of his parents who never accepted him. I see the suffering in my friends’ eyes when they detail the isolated childhoods they had growing up, never feeling like they belonged. The psychological effects of not being able to communicate with your family are devastating. Many Deaf children either withdraw into themselves or immerse into the Deaf community, where information is accessible everywhere. To be truly inclusive of your Deaf relatives, hearing families must continue to learn to sign. If any child is five, six, seven, eight, nine, and only knows a dozen words, that is language deprivation.

I grew up with an empty check to fill against the able-bodied system, and craved validation. I wanted to prove a point, to scramble up to stand on equal footing alongside the hearing person because that’s what my parents encouraged me to do. I’m now disheartened because this isn’t possible, not as long as sign language is still seen as a quirk and not the best means of communication for Deaf people. Not as long as Deaf people are still belittled and seen as an inconvenience or as part of a “diversity” quota that needs to be filled. Not as long as Deaf people continue to fall behind in education, in self-actualization, in politics, because the same groups of hearing people continue to pander to the ignorant in the face of dissenting opinions from Deaf people themselves. My father resented his family for depriving him his natural language, and I see him living vicariously through the successes of my Deaf sister and myself. I once resented him for imposing his expectations on us, but I now know he’s just proud.