Naomi the Wordsmith

The weirdest Christmas party you’ve ever seen

There’s Christmas decorations everywhere.

The music is so loud the floor visibly vibrates. No need to tap your foot to the beat, the floor is doing it for you.

My mum and dad are sitting at a table together. I’m the baby cradled in my mum’s arms. It’s a good thing I’m deaf – no need to worry about the noise damaging my infant ears.

The music smothers the sound of my dad’s speech. “Can’t hear you. Too bloody loud.”

You’d think the dancing attendees would be hounding the DJ to turn the music down. But they’re Deaf – they need the vibration to enjoy the music. To feel the beat run through their body and dance.

In the corners of the room, there’s groups of people, talking. Only to my parents, it looks like they’re making alien hand gestures with weirdly expressive faces.

Sign language.

The only clue to the raffle going on is the ticket my dad is holding.

In my mum’s arms, I don’t look at her. I don’t look anywhere. The very definition of deaf to the world.

Me – the baby too like a doll

That’s the way I always was, before I had hearing aids. Cut off from the world.

You could tell I was desperate to connect.

To try and hear people talking to me, I’d slam my left ear (my better hearing one) on their mouths. We had this teddy bear that played sound and I cried if it wasn’t next to my left ear.

And like I said, I never looked at anyone, not even my mum. My interaction with the world was the same as a toy doll.

I was on this adventure thing in France as a kid and we went in this cave. I had to take my hearing aids off, because wearing them meant risking them breaking.

Inside the cave, the cave guide announced, “Let’s turn off our torches, to experience how dark this cave really is.” We all flicked the torches off.

And I screamed and screamed and screamed.

The darkness and the silence was so overpowering that I didn’t know if I still existed. Sometimes I wonder if that’s what it was like for me as a baby, hearing nothing and seeing nothing.

My mum kept telling doctors that I wasn’t acting anywhere near normally. Once, one glared at her and said, “Well, what do you expect me to do? I can’t help it if your baby hates you.”

Even though babies clearly can’t hate their mothers (how terrible would that be as an evolutionary tactic) this really stung. My mum couldn’t help but wonder if maybe it was true.

After all, if I didn’t hate her, why wouldn’t I look at her? Why would I turn away when she held me up to her face?

We know now that deaf and visually impaired babies don’t process the world well. Facial expressions are still hard for me to process sometimes as an adult.

But that didn’t help my mum, who just wanted her baby to look at her. It’s hard to get to know a baby who never looks at you and never moves, even when you’re holding them.

After more advocacy from my family, my hearing was tested.

The worst Christmas gift – “Your baby is deaf”

I was diagnosed deaf on Christmas Eve 1999. They kept audiology open so we wouldn’t spend Christmas not knowing.

I was definitely deaf, but we wouldn’t know the details for a while. That’s because babies’ hearing is tested using brain-stem testing. This can confirm a baby is deaf, but it can’t tell you exactly how.

We had to wait until I was older to find out what sounds I struggled most with.

They tried to tell my mum I wouldn’t need hearing aids because I wasn’t responding to sight or sound. Medical speak for “what’s the point?”

My parents heard dire predictions of me never talking, never living a hint of a good quality of life. And even without that, how can hearing parents talk to their deaf baby who won’t look at them? It seemed the most impassable of language barriers.

But my mum stood up for me. It was decided. I was going to have hearing aids.

It was the only way we’d find out who I was going to be.

As my parents start to leave the audiology department, the receptionist says, “Hey, wait.” My parents stop and listen.

“There’s this Deaf Christmas party going on tonight. For the local Deaf community. I’m one of the organisers. Do you want to go?”

Stuffing my new hearing aids in my teeny tiny ears

I got my first pair of hearing aids on 16 February 2000, when I was 6 months old. I had to go to this special audiology unit in Brighton that catered for teeny tiny deaf babies.

It was my mum, me, and my gran. My gran’s the person taking the photos. My dad wanted to be there too, but his boss refused to give him the time off work. At least he has those cute photos of me.

As you can see, my mum struggled to fit my tiny hearing aids into my tiny ears. The audiologist had to tell her, “Try not to cover her face with your hand.”

Turns out, babies need to breathe.

My mum was so focused on the seemingly impossible task she wasn’t looking at me at first.

But something strikes me about those pictures, looking back. I’m just lying there, unresponsive, as my mum struggles to cram this strange new object into my ear. You’d think I’d be uncomfortable, squirming and wriggling too much to get a clear photograph.

“Yeah, you didn’t move at all,” my mum says when I ask her about it. “You had this faraway stare, looking at nothing.”

I needed a trigger to switch me on.

The audiologist put my hearing aids in much faster than my mum. The perks of professional experience. And then he turned the hearing aids on and started talking to my mum.

As the audiologist was talking, I looked at him. I’d never looked at anyone before.

When my mum said something in response, I turned to look at her, for the first time.

My eyes are focused. The thousand-yard-stare is gone. I was looking at the world and the people around me for the first time.

And my eyes are wide with the sheer astonishment of a whole new sensory experience.

My gran was watching me, as she took those photos. Tears of joy streak down her face.

The audiologist gives his warning, and I look at him again. “You mustn’t let her wear hearing aids for longer than one hour a day. It’s a lot for a small baby to experience, when they’ve never experienced anything like it before. It would overwhelm and distress her. Just one hour a day.”

So when we got back home, my mum followed the doctor’s orders. Time to take them out.

I wasn’t so obedient.

After she took them out, after I realised the sound was gone, damn, was there hell to pay. I created bloody havoc. I screamed and wriggled and wailed.

So it was decided – the hearing aids stay in. All day.

Satisfied by my victory and repossession of my hearing aids, I settled down.

Babies should smile at 6 weeks. It was one of the many milestones that I had missed (I got better grades later in life).

That very day, the first hearing aid day, I did my first smile.

And before 16 February 2000, I was like a doll for all the life in me. But on that day I became a person.

Can you imagine what it was like for my dad – leaving for work, knowing your baby girl never responds, then returning to a baby that looks at you and smiles?

To say it was like I was plugged in is too weak a simile. Instead I’ll offer this metaphor from my gran.

“Picture two Christmas trees.” One has no lights and no decorations. The other shines with the lights and the reflective tinsel. “The difference between the two Christmas trees is the difference between you before hearing aids and you after.”

It was the best day.

After all, 25 years later, we all still know the date. Other early medical events, we have to search for the hospital letter to find the date.

Hearing Aid Day is engraved into our memory forever as the day that changed everything.

Every year, we celebrate my birthday. And every year, we celebrate Hearing Aid Day too. It’s even more important as a family event than my birthday.

The day I was born was important, but it was also difficult and traumatic. There’s a lot of painful memories mixed up with it. Things only got better after Hearing Aid Day.

As I got older, my friends probably saw my birthday celebrations the same way as any kid. I didn’t want to be different. But even in my most self-conscious years, Hearing Aid Day has always meant more to me.

On Hearing Aid Day, I think about what my hearing aids have done for me. How much they’ve made me who I am. Without my hearing aids, I would be a very different person.

I owe a lot to the funny little devices in my ears that whistle from time to time.

Back to the weirdest Christmas party

The Christmas music is loud and Deaf people are dancing and signing. My dad’s holding the raffle ticket and my mum’s holding me.

I’m diagnosed deaf. What the hell are two hearing parents supposed to do with a deaf baby? How are they going to talk to me? What will my life be like? Will I have friends? Go to school? Have a job?

The future swims before you when you’re holding a baby. But how can the toy-like doll that was me in my mum’s arms have a future?

Deaf kids came up to my parents, all curious to have a look at me.

“Is she deaf?” “Yes.”

“Is she signing deaf or talking deaf?” “Um-” “Will she be able to talk?”

The daggers of hope and fear rise in my parents’ hearts as they say, “We don’t know.”

But seeing all these deaf adults and kids talking, laughing, dancing, hugging, signing.

It was amazing. A world my parents couldn’t have imagined. Maybe I’d be the deaf kid being cheeky one day.

There was a future for me.

I wish time travel was real…

It’s the end of January, 2025. The iPad screen frames my mum’s face as we talk.

We’ve been spending a lot of time talking about the first Hearing Aid Day. I knew I needed to do this blog post and it had to be about this story.

Although I’m a big part of it, my parents are the starring characters. I wrote this, but they’re the ones who’ve been speaking to you.

We’re talking and laughing and crying. I wasn’t expecting it to be so hard to write this post. But I’d never really heard the full story before.

Memory is in fuzzy patches, not a timeline. It so rarely has defined beginnings and ends.

Sometimes I heard my mum talking about this wild weird Christmas party where everyone was deaf. Other times she’d smile at the memory of seeing her daughter come alive.

That’s how I knew the story – in disconnected scenes. But hearing the story in full – the trauma, the relief, the fear, the joy, the heartbreak, the hope, the emotional whirlwind of it all.

It’s the hardest, but most meaningful piece of writing I’ve ever written.

I’m listening to my mum. Really listening to this story for the first time.

When she stops talking, I shake my head, trying to process the complexity of it. I look down, too nervous to make eye contact with what I’m about to say. I’ll look in her eyes after I say it.

“Mum, if I could travel in time, I’d go back to that moment when you’re at the party. Where those cheeky deaf kids are coming up to you, peering at me, and asking you and dad if I’ll ever talk. And as you’re poised between fear and hope, I’d come up to you. I’d tell you and show you who I’m going to become.”

I look up at her and reconnect eye contact. She’s smiling and her eyes are teary. She says, “I’d really like that. In that scene, you should come to us with a copy of this blog post.”