The Feel of Music

I let all the air rush out of my lungs as I flopped onto the couch. The smell of the warm brownie in my hand made my mouth drool but I would not let myself take the first bite until the show started. Grabbing the remote I quickly queued up the next episode of Vampire Diaries, snuggling further into the pillowy depths of the sofa. I carefully picked up my brownie and was about to let my teeth sink into its glorious chocolatey goodness when I realized—I forgot milk.

You can’t eat a brownie without milk. But I was so tired! I pulled myself up to a seating position and turned around. Yes! Dad was right next to the fridge. “Dad,” I called, unnecessarily relieved I wouldn’t have to make the 10 step trek. He didn’t respond. “Dad!” I don’t really know why I called again. His battery was dead.

His back to me, he continued to unload the dishwasher. I resorted to motion, flailing my arms above my head wildly, probably looking pretty similar to one of those inflatable tube men you see next to that store you would never go into. He was now closing the dishwasher, about to head upstairs. The motion wasn’t getting his attention so I threw my hands down against the arm of the couch, attempting to bang it with enough force to make the ground shake. Ha. I’m not the Hulk. But I was running out of time. I whipped my feet out from under the blanket and stomped them even harder on the ground. That was sure to make an impact he could feel from across the room. Too late. I groaned. Ugh, if only he wasn’t—I stopped myself. Sometimes I really abhorred how selfish I could be, how many times I had thought that awful thought. It wasn’t his fault.

As I settled back into the couch, with a nice cold glass of milk to complement my now lukewarm brownie, a part of me thought of how funny that scene would have been to anyone watching. They probably would have thought I was insane. To be fair, I was being dramatic. I could have just gotten up and got the dang glass for myself. I pushed play and finally took a bite of the brownie. If he wasn’t deaf, it would have been warmer. God, I was awful.

My dad is deaf. 

Ok, this time I’m not trying to be dramatic. It’s just a fact.

Honestly, up until a couple years ago, it didn’t phase me. The cochlear implant he wears to help him hear frequencies was never abnormal. I didn’t think twice about the fact that his social life depended on the battery of a device connected to the side of his head. Why would I think it was strange, when it was all I had known?

I have this vague memory (maybe it was not even a real memory—maybe my brain fabricated it—but for the sake of this explanation, I’ll continue) of when I first grasped the uniqueness of my situation. I remember as a young girl going to a friend’s house and she asked her dad a question. He responded with his back turned. He didn’t look at her when she asked the question. And he still knew what she said. I was confused—how could he have known without reading her lips? And then it dawned on me. Her dad wasn’t deaf. 

There’s a certain stage of cognitive development where children are mentally unable to grasp the concept of a life outside of their own. If you want to be scientific about it, it’s called the Preoperational stage. A Swiss Psychologist by the name of Jean Piaget defined this stage as being inherently egocentric. Not in a malicious way. The kids can’t help it. 

As a young girl, I actually thought that every Dad on earth had to face a person each time they spoke, watching the subtle shapes their lips formed in order to understand them. When I found out that most Dads were just like Moms and could understand you if you yelled for toilet paper from the upstairs bathroom, I wasn’t upset, I was intrigued. It was like the world just became a whole lot bigger.

Cliché, I know. But don’t judge me too harshly; it happens to everyone. All children have a time in their life when they move up the ladder from the Preoperational rung to the Concrete Operational rung, when they move from climbing their own ladder to reaching the roof and being able to see the whole neighborhood. Most just don’t even realize they made the step. It’s funny, because one would think that looking at the whole neighborhood would be a lot more enjoyable than staring at speckled beige stucco. But the neighborhood isn’t a scene from A Wrinkle in Time—some have multiple stories or bigger lawns or luxury cars or pools or are made out of a lot fancier materials than stucco.

I wouldn’t label the emotion as jealousy. I am not jealous of other people’s dads. Frankly, I think I’m the luckiest damn girl in the world. It’s not that I don’t have a three-story house, a nice lawn and a car of my own. I’m not wishing for a different life to a broken Zoltar machine. Sometimes, I just wish that he could hear. Not so that I wouldn’t have to get up for a glass of milk, although that would be nice (says the devil on my shoulder), but so that he wouldn’t have to struggle to stay awake watching countless performances from his silent world in the dim crowd of a theatre.  

This whole thing would have been a lot easier if I just played soccer. Since before I could remember, my parents enrolled me in about every sport you could think of, despite my utter apathy about the idea of running, dribbling, or swimming my way to a plastic gold trophy. While every other girl was scuffling and fighting over trying to get a ball in a net, I was standing in the middle of the field, wishing I could go home and watch The Lion King again so I could get down that last phrase of Hakuna Matata. Watch any one of our home videos, and more often than not, you’ll find me singing or dancing to some Disney film, making sure I stay well within the camcorder’s viewfinder. My life has always moved to the beat of music. It’s how I know when the dance is over, when I’m a little too sharp, or when the curtains will close on the last scene. I’m a performer. And sometimes, I just wish my dad could hear the music.  

The fact that my dad would never be able to understand one of the most important aspects of my life didn’t really hit me until I started high school. Before then my life consisted of pretending to be a mermaid or devouring the next fantasy series I could get my hands on. My mom calls me a speed reader, probably due to the fact that I grew up watching TV with subtitles, another thing I thought was normal. To this day, watching TV without them feels like going out in public naked. 

I first started dancing in 6th grade, which is really late in the dance world. I didn’t care that my legs were too bulky and my stomach poked out too much to be a real dancer—I just did it because I loved it. The feeling of surrendering my body to the rhythm of the music and letting that force pull and shape my limbs was almost spiritual for me. As for singing, I’d never been in a choir until freshman year of high school. In the world of arts, I was so late to the game that I wasn’t even really considered in the running. But I’m not a competitor at heart, so that’s okay. Slowly, so gradually I didn’t even really realize it was happening, I became a full-fledged triple threat. Singing, dancing, and acting (well, sort of acting—I gave that up after a few shows. The drama department was too dramatic). The girl that had pranced around the house singing Hakuna Matata at the top of her lungs was finally free, no longer trapped by the world of competitive sportsmanship. I was late to the game, but it wasn’t really a game to me. It was art, and it was my passion. 

This isn’t a sad story. I still like to dance, and I hope to sing with other people again one day. This is a story about how I became a performer that understands the power of personal connection that goes beyond the superficial stimulations of sight and sound. I was never the best at turns or leaps or flexibility or belting or had the best range. I danced with girls a few years younger than me and I never got a solo or anything like that in choir. 

I was the girl who got the award for “Most Expressive”.  While others sang with their voices, I sang with my heart. While others danced with their body, I danced with my soul. Performing is something so much more to me than executing the right move or making sure I hit every note perfectly on key. That’s important, but to me, it's like living in a world without believing in God. The technicality pales in comparison to the value of making the audience feel something—taking them to a different world. 

And here’s the trick—I can’t rely on sound or motion or force. I can’t wave my hands in the air or stomp my feet or yell, “Feel something!” I can’t do this because every time I see my dad watching from his silent reality, I have to push my talents into another realm, one of deeper emotion that can only be conveyed with the heart. While I wasn’t the best dancer or singer, no one had to tell me what to do with my face. I knew. It came so natural to me to let all my emotions surface to that place Dad looks when he needs to understand me. He can’t understand it any other way. He can’t hear the music that shapes my life. 

But I can help him feel it.