Deaf and Going to PA to a Hearing Famly

Thursday is Thanksgiving and for the first time in many years I will be making the trip from Michigan to PA to attend the annual family thanksgiving dinner. I can't even remember when I was last there with my husband and children with me.

My family is huge with all 8 kids married and having kids of their own. There is now a third generation with nieces and nephews having families of their own. The dinner is held at my parents house and the basement is just lined with tables or wood on saw horses. There are normally around 40-50 people there. Many of the youngest babies I have not yet met and I don't know these children.

My husband works in the travel industry. He always has to work during holidays as airports do not close and those are their busiest weeks of the year. It was a rare treat for my husband to actually have off this week. We decided to take advantage of that and go to PA and visit with my family.

We have two old vans. Neither of them are dependable to go long distances. I would be curious to see how far we got before having car problems if we drove one of these vans. We will not be taking that risk. We rented a car for the week. This is something we cannot afford to do and to have to pay gas on top of this practically "kills" us but we are going with full trust that Lord will provide all of our needs. At least we will have be able to stay with family so no hotel expenses.

What does this have to do with me being deaf? A lot! This is the first time I'm going "home" being 100% deaf. Before I had a hearing aid. I lost it a few months ago. That is a future blog. Without my hearing aid, I am completely deaf. I only hear very loud noises right next to my ear and I can feel (hear) myself talk. I will have to depend 100% on lipreading.

But I am blessed. My husband is hearing and I know he will interpret as much as he can. Bless his heart. My parents never learned to sign and have no interest in doing so. Both my parents are hard for me to lip read with my father being almost impossible as he has a hairlip. My oldest sister is deaf and of course signs. I will be able to communicate with her. Her husband and daughters are hearing but also sign. My next two older sisters only know finger spelling and they finger spell everything. My twin, who had a cochlear implant last December knows no sign at all and has no interest in being involved with the deaf world. She will always be a hearing person with a hearing problem. This would be the first time I am seeing her with her new implant so it will be interesting to see what changes it has brought to her life.

I do not like group situations. I do not like not knowing what is going on around me. This will happen a lot during the next few days. On Thursday I will be surrounded by people who will not make any effort to talk to me. I will definitely try to talk to them. Sometimes these situations make me literally sick and I end up in the bathroom just throwing up from stress. I am hoping that does not happen this time and I will relax and just go with the flow. It is helpful that my husband will be with me this year.

As I mentioned before, he normally works every holiday (unless it happens to fall on his normal days off). Since he works for an airline, the family flies for free on standby tickets. I have often flown home with my children on standby tickets. This works well but is a pain during holidays when flights are full and unpredictable. There have been times we were stuck in airports for hours and even overnight due to lack of available seats. This is a risk we take flying stand by. I'm not complaining. With four of us going to PA, we decided not to take the risk of flying standby.

My family likes to talk and talk and talk. I am normally lost within the first minute or two as the subject changes too fast. By the time I figure out what the subject is, they are talking about a new subject. This is very boring for me. For the most part, they are talking about things that are happening around their lives that I have no information about. My family is not very good at staying in touch with me or keeping me informed of things happening in their lives. I do try to email all of them with updates about my life and my kids but its not often I get a return email with their information. Now and then, yes but not often enough to be really involved with anything they are doing. I feel very left out in my family and while there is no bickering or tensions or anything negative of that sort between my 7 brothers and myself, I can honestly say none of them are close to me either and none of them can really say they know me. We are just blood related and see each other now and then. I do know if I needed something, I could probably ask any of them for help and they would do it - just because we are related.

I have lived out here in Michigan eleven years now. In 11 years, only my parents and my 2nd oldest brother have come to visit us. That's sad. I have been to all of their homes in the past 11 years. it seems like my husband and I have to do all the traveling if we want to see the family. They will not take the time or the expense to come visit us. Again, that is sad.

After we got married we lives a hour south from my where the majority of my family lives today. Even only an hour away, we had to do all the traveling. With the exception of my parents, no one visited us.

I don't know if the problem is me or what. I have given up figuring it out but it still bothers me. Perhaps we are boring people. We don't have a fancy house with a lot of "toys". Unfortunately, we do not even have a spare bedroom but we will gladly make room for visitors. My daughter will happily give up her bed. I would love to have my family come and visit me. Come and see what I do all day. Come and see what I see outside my back window when I wash the dishes. Come and see my town. Come and see where we do our shopping. Come and see the monthly ministry, Deaf Cafe, I'm involved with and in that way show a little interest in my life.

Five of my sisters and brothers still live very close to each other. Both my brothers attend one church and 3 of my sisters and their families plus my parents attend another church. They see each other at least once a week and call each other often on the phone. That group is very involved with each other lives.

Then my oldest sister lives in MD just outside Wash. DC and my youngest sister lives in S.C. They are both very involved with their professions and families. And me here in Michigan. Us three are isolated from the rest of the family. I guess that can be both good and bad.

So... anyways... tomorrow I'll be on the road driving towards PA. I just hope we are not ignored and someone there shows a little interest in my family and what we do with our lives. We sacrificed a lot of our time and money to go and I want to make it worthwhile for us. I want it to be a wonderful memory for my kids and my myself as well. I want to say,"I'm glad we went" while driving home on Sunday.

Being deaf in a hearing family can be very lonely as we are often pushed to the side. We stand along the walls and just watch the activity happening around us. We tend to be ignored and sometimes its just too much trouble to get into a conversation. How sad. I do want to end that while I am not very close to any of my brothers and sisters, I love them all and I know they love me too. There have been no arguing or falling outs or anything of that sort. We just sort of lost touch with each other in the busyness of living our lives and raising our families. Hopefully I can get back in touch again during the next few days and that goes for any family that is getting together on Thursday... doesn't matter if you are deaf or hearing.