Deaf, Hard of Hearing, Late Deafened, Hearing, ASL, PSE, English, Mainstreamed, Deaf School, RIT Deaf, Gally Deaf, Grass Roots Deaf, Educated Deaf, Detroit Deaf, Suburbs Deaf, ITP Student, Native Language User… All labels I could identify when I was a kid.

Then there was me. I’m a CODA. Arguably, I can be any one of those.

“Come on, you’ll REALLY like it.” my sister started her usual round of BS, “You’ll know some of the people there. You’ll die laughing, the guy is funny… Joni is going, Gabby is going, a bunch of other CODAs.” Joni Harvie’s father and my father were classmates in Belleville, Ontario, Canada together, and Gabby was a cousin on my mom’s side- and also a CODA. One big happy CODA family we’d be… To me, it sounded kinda gross.

It wasn’t the first time my sister had tried dragging me to some CODA event. The first and last gathering I went to was an obnoxious display by ugly people trying to be really cool. (I know, I’m guilty of being ugly and attempting to be really cool myself, but that’s beside the point.) In my head, I wasn’t one of them, and in my heart, I wasn’t one of them.

My folks are Deaf, yes, but I had gotten over my issues and I’ve nothing to complain about. I mean, Deaf people didn’t wrong me as a child. Or did they? How much of my life experiences are shaped by my parent’s deafness? And it wasn’t a negative. Or was it? Had my parents lack of hearing been a sour lemon that I, as a CODA, had decided to make lemonade out of? (Maybe THAT’S why people always said “I’m sorry” when told my mom and dad were Deaf!) Or was I really just a typical teenager with teenage angst that was fortunate to not have to sneak out the window because I could just walk out the back door?

My answer was “Sure, I’ll go. It’s for the Deaf Arts Festival, right?” Truth was, I was jumping back into Interpreting and didn’t want to be one of the ones that ‘just makes money off of the Deaf community and gives nothing back’, and it was for a good cause. Of course- networking, meeting new contacts, yadda, yadda, yadda… Oh, and I was single, you never know where a good looking girl is going to show up. Of course, when I finally decide to go, the place is sold out… Freida Morrison, the Director of the Michigan Deaf Arts Festival was able to score me a ticket at the last minute.

So, off I go to this banquet hall in Rochester Hills, Michigan to see some guy named Ablahblahblah, or something… Seriously. Alan Abarbanell, I found out later, is referred to as Abababa because no one could pronounce Abarbanell when he was a kid.

This place was no theater, just a place where people celebrate weddings and have Christmas parties. This crowd of about 300 people show up and it’s a mix of Deaf, Hearing, CODAs, signers, non-signers, parents of Deaf kids, ITP students that were trying to sign (needed community hours), even a few co-workers of a Deaf guy that were told that by the end of the show they would ‘just get it’. And then there was me.

I was none of the above. I was normal, well adjusted, and had come upon my own seperate peace away from the Deaf community. So I sat off in the back of the building, at a table in a room that barely held the crowd, wondering which of these groups I belonged to least. All the usual suspects there to see the show- the guys from Deaf bowling, the old folks from the Deaf Seniors Center, the Catholics, the whole nine yards. Yep, somewhere in there was me.

I had just had a son. They say he looks just like me. I had recently gotten divorced, had just been laid off from the Detroit Police Department, and had one of my closest friends pass away at a few years older than I was from cancer. My life had been tossed upside down in a 2 week time frame. It was a time of great self-defining, as I was re-assembling the pieces. Like Jean Val Jean asks in the great musical and book Les Miserables, “Who am I?”, I was asking at that point in life- who the hell am I? My seperate peace had allowed many sides of me to seep into another.

Each story that Alan told brought me to moments in my lifetime that were glued to my memory because of emotion. The happiness, the sadness, the trauma, the grief, and eventually- my comfort in seperation.

I heard stories of my Interpreting life- (Sure, I’ll interpret your Dr’s appointment. - and later- No, you didn’t tell me it was a gynecologist.)

Stories of my hearing life- (Is that really a monster in your basement? Nope, just my dad talking to my mom. I know it doesn’t sound normal but yes, I can understand every word that he says. How I’d run back to the house not to find out what she wanted, but just so mom would stop yelling my name.)

Stories of my Deaf life- (I still struggle with where in the toilet bowl to pee that makes the least amount of noise.)

Stories of my Deaf and Hearing life- (Yes, I as a CODA do find great comfort and sense of home when I can sign for the first few sentences, then speak, then switch back to sign, without losing my listener. And me- I also love when my Deaf friends are ‘hearing’ enough to dig music.)

And in fact, as I listened to the stories of his parents as they aged- while daily internally processing my father’s Alzheimer’s Disease, I found that I was not alone in most, if not all of my CODA and family related struggles. And yes, in fact, those experiences do impact who I am today. And I would say it impacted my life greatly.

Children Are Vessels Their Parents Pour Poison Into.

It’s a great quote from Salman Rushdie, Oscar happens to agree with me on this fact. We don’t get to pick our parents, nor do we get to pick our poison.

My dad got his union card as a printer and that was the best that ASD and my uncle could give him in the late 50’s. My uncle was hearing and has his PhD in Deaf ed or something. My uncle’s son became a big-wig at Microsoft. I always thought that the differences between my cousin and I were because my Uncle was hearing. It took me 20 years to get the courage up to ask my uncle why he couldn’t teach his little brother better? My uncle was one of his teachers at ASD.

Would I have had the same struggles in life if my dad were just another lineman at GM that could hear, or would my dad have not became a welder and also had his PhD? Would my struggles have been completely different? Was my parent’s Deafness the poison they poured into me? Or was it their religion? Maybe it was the way they disciplined us. Maybe it was the way they didn’t.

I wouldn’t say every question was answered at Abababa’s show, but I would say it was therapeutic. I laughed and I cried… I took deep breaths of acknowledgement as he poignantly described the line between those that can hear, and those that can’t. I was reminded how he and I had often been chosen by the God(s) to stand in the middle, and in hindsight I consider the awesome power that this brings. My experience reminded me how this awesome power can sometimes corrupt.

And last but certainly not least, I found the true answer to the age old question: Why do Deaf people take so long to say goodbye? And as I lingered afterwards in great conversation surrounded by Alan and several other CODAs. The answer was not as simple as it would seem…

In fact, these days it’s alot like leaving my son in Detroit and coming back to Washington, DC. Yes, DC is home for me and I have my life here, but it sure is hard as hell to leave family.

I walk into work these days- all these damn terps with our intracacies, personality conflicts and inter-office politics… This place is alot like home and these people are alot like family. We don’t get to pick our fellow CODA’s, but they sure are nice to come home to. And they sure are hard to leave.

Alan Abarbanell will be performing at the Imagination Theater in Bethesda January 14th, 2007. For more information go to www.abababatour.com