{"id":308972,"date":"2026-04-02T07:10:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T11:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/?p=308972"},"modified":"2026-04-01T16:46:34","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T20:46:34","slug":"what-was-lost-when-my-daughter-gained-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/what-was-lost-when-my-daughter-gained-sound\/","title":{"rendered":"What Was Lost When My Daughter Gained Sound"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Goodbye, Mermaids by Christie Chapman<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cFairy tales since the beginning of recorded time, and perhaps earlier, have been a means to conquer the terrors of mankind through metaphor.\u201d – Jack Zipes, folklorist<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cFor me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.\u201d – Carl Sagan, scientist <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Wind brushed the trees, like a mother brushing the long flowy hair of a can\u2019t-sit-still little one. My baby daughter, who was born deaf, and I lay on the soft carpeted floor of our townhouse and watched through the sliding glass door. The sight was peaceful, hushed (for me) by the glass, the slim waving branches like arms conducting a silent orchestra. I said to my daughter (out loud, out of habit; I was still learning her language): “Is this what the world is like for you?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later I stood and slid open the door. As a hearing person, accustomed to thinking of sound as beautiful, I wanted to sense the wind in this way, too. I pushed aside the glass and let it in. The roar seemed angry, agitated. I thought of giants from fairy tales, the tiger-headed guardian at the Cave of Wonders where the genie resides. “Who dares disturb my slumber?”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Princess and the Frog<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

When a child arrives outside the norm\u2014a selkie, a fae changeling; or, to be more mundane, a baby with a disability\u2014some parents cling to facts. These feel like grip-holds as you scale a sheer cliff face, as your fingertips pinken and pulse, as your foot slips and sparkling rock dust scatters far below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact: The medical community uses the caduceus as its symbol, two snakes twined around a winged staff. Even though there\u2019s a snake, its members take an oath: “First, do no harm.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We brought our daughter in for the six-hour cochlear-implants surgery when she was 13 months old. Tiny blue hospital gown, treaded socks in the smallest size that were still comically large on her. She carried her frog puppet into the operating room with her. She wasn\u2019t supposed to, but the doctors broke protocol because she was scared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the surgery, as my husband and I hurried through antiseptic halls to see her, I heard a foreign, ragged cry. “Whose baby is that?” I thought. I saw a drugged, hungry baby flailing in the arms of a nurse who was not her mother. The tight-wrapped gauze bandage pushed down on my daughter\u2019s brow so she looked like a tiny Neanderthal. My first, irrational thought: “What have you done to my baby?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We spent the night at the hospital. A sweet nurse turned the TV to a station that just shows digital stars after 9:30 p.m., white specks zooming through blackness. The bandage on my daughter\u2019s head was tied in a way that gave her Princess Leia buns, one over each side where her brain had been invaded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Villainy<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

From Aladdin<\/em>\u2019s Jafar and the thumb-sucking lion king of Robin Hood<\/em> to latter-day Slytherin, snakes are aligned with villains. When Harry Potter\u2019s friends realize he\u2019s a Parselmouth, fluent in the language of serpents, they regard him with suspicion and fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The old ASL sign for \u201ccochlear implant,\u201d I\u2019m told, was a snake sinking its fangs into a person\u2019s skull. This is how maligned the devices once were in the Deaf community, and still are for some. Far more than hearing aids, which do not require surgery, cochlear implants are seen as brain-damagers (even as the technology has improved) and culture-erasers (especially since the technology has improved, and the devices have become more common, leaving fewer people reliant on ASL).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current sign for \u201ccochlear implants\u201d still looks like this to me, although supposedly it has changed. To make both signs, you crook two fingers and stab them at your head. In one case, the handshape simply replicates the bent-over-the-ear device. In the other, it\u2019s a deadly bite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The difference in meaning depends on how you interpret it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Quest<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Before my daughter\u2019s surgery, I searched. I wanted to make sure we were making the right choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact: A Google search for the terms “cochlear implants” and “child abuse” brings up many articles that contain both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years ago, while walking to my then-workplace in Washington, DC, I saw a protest: Deaf people with signs saying deafness is not a disability, not a flaw to be fixed. I mentioned this to people at the time, mystified. Now I\u2019m not mystified. I get it: They say the issue is systemic; they are a linguistic minority who are rarely accommodated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, deafness does not hurt. Deafness does not cut your life short. In this way it\u2019s separate from other abnormalities\u2014minorities\u2014of the body. Your deaf kid could live a happy life if the world would just cooperate. No need to get a scalpel involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact: A Google search for the terms \u201ccochlear implants\u201d and \u201ccultural genocide\u201d brings up many articles that contain both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the surgery, as my husband and I hurried through antiseptic halls to see her, I heard a foreign, ragged cry.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

When our daughter was six months old\u2014before the surgery\u2014my husband and I brought her to an ASL-immersive program for deaf babies and their parents at Gallaudet, a university humming with deaf students and staff. We stayed in this program for two years, including after the surgery. Some of the deaf babies got \u201cthe surgery,\u201d others did not. Some families chose not to get the surgery; a few babies weren\u2019t eligible for medical reasons (no auditory nerves to make the devices work). It was an omnipresent topic for the parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three of my daughter\u2019s classmates had two deaf parents each, entirely deaf families, some with deaf siblings. A classmate\u2019s father told us\u2014through an interpreter\u2014that he and his wife had emphatically told their doctor: \u201cNo surgery.\u201d They had the doctor put a note in their daughter\u2019s file. The father was a professor at Gallaudet; his wife was an administrator there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact: ASL uses different syntax than English; typically, the most urgent item in a sentence comes first. I\u2019ll try to approximate it here: Surgery, all Deaf people? = Deaf people\u2014all-gone. Deaf people all-gone? = Deaf culture all-gone. Gallaudet all-gone. Home all-gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Realms<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

One of the first things my husband and I learned about after our daughter\u2019s diagnosis was \u201cbig-D Deaf\u201d versus \u201clittle-d deaf.\u201d \u201cBig-D Deaf\u201d refers to a culture, a language that\u2019s signed. A hearing child of Deaf parents who use sign language at home would be considered Deaf\u2014that hearing child is part of the Deaf world, a citizen of the Deaf community. \u201cLittle-d deaf\u201d is a medical term. You could be medically deaf but raised apart from the Deaf community, using your voice and devices, and no signs\u2014you are deaf, but not Deaf. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You could be both. These can overlap. My daughter is deaf\u2014in the paperwork at her \u201cmainstream\u201d school, where all of her classmates are hearing; at the audiologist\u2019s office, where the focus is on the sounds she\u2019s able to perceive with her devices. And, as someone who relies on sign language for part of the day, when her devices give her fatigue; as someone who\u2019s connected to the local Deaf community, thanks to various programs we\u2019ve participated in\u2014she\u2019s also Deaf, even though she has cochlear implants and chatters away vocally like any hearing child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a hearing parent who has spent my life in the hearing world, and still has my hearing, I will never be Deaf. Unless one day I am deaf\u2014if, say, I lose my hearing in old age, and switch over to sign language. (A \u201cCODA\u201d is a hearing Child of Deaf Adults. According to the comments sections of Deaf influencers I follow on Instagram, there is no such term for parents of a Deaf child.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At times it all sounds like a riddle, or the baseball joke about \u201cWho\u2019s on first?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this way, my daughter and I will always be native citizens of two different worlds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Instruction Manual<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

At the heart of this divide are these banal devices. Pieces of them sit in our kitchen right now, their batteries screwed into a charger, on a shelf that also holds cookbooks and bags of chips\u2014part of a domestic tableau, as unassuming as a block of knives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The devices are ugly, if you go by sight alone. They would look at home encased in glass at a drab museum about some closed-down sanitarium. Band-Aid beige, the color of old nurse shoes and grandma undergarments. Yet in one way they\u2019re beautiful: We chose the color that most closely matches my daughter’s hair. (Viewed in this light, they take on the color of sandcastles, or a butterscotch-topped treat on a summer day.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019re clunky, on her head, as she goes about her day; in the age of nanotechnology, you would think we\u2019d have a stealthier design. Inspector Gadget head, especially when she was a baby, before her hair grew out to hide them. Too many components, like something you\u2019d need a thick instruction manual for\u2014we<\/em> needed an instruction manual, when they were new to our household.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three of my daughter\u2019s classmates had two deaf parents each, entirely deaf families, some with deaf siblings.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The parts that conspire to bring my daughter sound: A flat, round outer magnet like a poker chip, connected to a short cord. The other end of the cord connects to the \u201cprocessor,\u201d a vaguely snail-shaped hunk of plastic that hooks over the ear; this is the part a medical expert must program, the part that costs a million bucks, give or take, if you lose it, say, in the ocean. Attached to that is a chunky battery you screw on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there\u2019s the part you can’t see, another flat, round magnet under the skin on either side of my daughter’s skull. Over the years her hair has grown over these places, like a maiden whose locks conceal an enchantment. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Consumer Facts<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes I lean down to kiss my daughter\u2019s hair and kiss beige plastic instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I visit the website of the company that makes these devices. I try to read the most basic, dumbed-down articles explaining how they work. This is where I should find reassurance in scientific terms, the language of progress. Instead, I glaze over. Electricity and magic, I conclude. Lightning and pixie dust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lights on her processors blink green when they\u2019re working. This is what I need to know. I see the green flashes when she runs around her grandparents\u2019 yard with cousins at night. The others sometimes hold glow sticks and sometimes hold sparklers, depending on the occasion, but my daughter is the one I can always find in the dark. There she is.<\/em> My firefly.<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do the devices feel like, to me? Smooth, like a life made easier. What do they smell like? Audiologist waiting rooms, scenes of cheerful complicity. I try to discern a scent other than “plastic,” but my brain gets rerouted and ends up at abstraction. If I try to assign them a personality, they come up void. They\u2019re android by nature. My husband, a computer engineer, says with pride that our daughter has \u201cbionic ears.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact: Vicki, the child robot from a 1980s sitcom called Small Wonder<\/em>, could shoot electricity into a car to jump-start its engine. She could jump-start a human heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact: If you ask Google whether a robot can get an MRI, the answer is no, because a typical robot contains ferromagnetic parts, and an MRI machine\u2019s powerful magnet would rip the robot apart in a process troublingly called  \u201cthe missile effect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My husband, a computer engineer, says with pride that our daughter has ‘bionic ears.’<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fact: On the seat-belt strap that goes across my daughter\u2019s car seat is a sleeve that says: \u201cNo MRI! I have a cochlear implant.\u201d It\u2019s for a potential ambulance crew. She has magnets in her head; an MRI machine could be disastrous, although scientists are now creating implants that are MRI-safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact: An MRI machine is not the only hostile environment for cochlear implants. When entering water, such as a pool or the ocean, the devices must be shielded inside a case made of plastic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact: Plastic is not natural; the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a \u201csoup\u201d of microplastics about twice the size of Texas or three times the size of France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cI Want\u201d Songs<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve heard that every Disney princess has a song about what she wants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A \u201cFaustian bargain\u201d is when a character gives their soul to the devil in exchange for something worldly, and the deal ends in tragedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact: In the movie The Sound of Metal<\/em>, a drummer named Ruben loses his hearing and joins a Deaf community that rejects the notion of deafness as a disability. When Ruben secretly undergoes surgery for cochlear implants, to restore the hearing he lost to years of harsh decibels\u2014the community leader, a beloved friend named Joe, asks Ruben to leave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact: At the end of Disney\u2019s animated The Little Mermaid<\/em>, Ariel stands with Prince Eric on his ship. She\u2019s wearing a wedding dress, waving goodbye to the mer-people she\u2019s left behind, her father and sisters and others. This makes me think of the surgery, of transformation, of realms entered and abandoned. In this light, Ariel appears to me as a traitor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I realize sirens are associated with their songs, and Ariel bargains her voice for love, going silent to join the human world (not the reverse)\u2014but the mer-folks\u2019 way of life outside the mainstream\/human world makes me think of the ocean dwellers as Deaf, the sea witch an unscrupulous surgeon:\u201cDon\u2019t you want to be part of that world? No matter the cost?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Either way you look at it\u2014when my daughter and I watch the movie, as Prince Eric and Ariel struggle to communicate on their boat date, the dire consequences and ticking clock, we always say: \u201cThis could have all been solved if they\u2019d just learned sign language.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Red Rover<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

My daughter makes up songs. “Never take our clubhouse away!” she used to caterwaul as a toddler, to the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” standing guard over her couch-pillow fort in a cowgirl hat and diaper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before her surgery, our family went to a Gallaudet homecoming football game. We wanted to immerse our daughter in her culture. One of our ASL teachers, a Texan who had wed his husband in matching cowboy hats, beamed down at my daughter in her stroller and greeted her in their language. They were members of the same tribe, and not just because of the cowboy hats.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my daughter\u2019s preschool class for deaf children, she had a little boyfriend named Sami. At recess, he took her hand and gallantly escorted her to the slides, like a prince charming. They held hands and ran laps around the playground, giddily paired up as if in a happily-ever-after. Sami also had the surgery but hated the devices. His parents, both Deaf, signed to him instead of forcing their child to adapt to a world that didn\u2019t feel like home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His parents, both Deaf, signed to him instead of forcing their child to adapt to a world that didn\u2019t feel like home.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Starting in kindergarten, my daughter and Sami attended separate schools\u2014my daughter in a class with hearing kids, Sami at a school for Deaf students. We see Sami\u2019s family each year at an annual picnic for the local Deaf community. For the last two years that we\u2019ve gone to the picnic, my daughter and Sami haven\u2019t recognized each other. They speak different languages now; my husband and I sign to our daughter when her devices are off, but she replies with her voice, knowing we can hear her. She signed as a toddler but has lost her muscle memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact: In the children\u2019s game \u201cRed Rover,\u201d one team chants for a player from the opposite team to \u201ccome over\u201d and break the chain formed by children\u2019s linked hands or arms. The object: You try and cross over to the other side. You try to break through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thumbs-Up<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

A scene: My daughter\u2019s nursery when she was a toddler, bedtime. It\u2019s the weekend, and the neighbors in the townhouse next door are having a party on their back patio. They talk and laugh at a respectable decibel level. My daughter has declined to remove her cochlear-implant processors, not finished hearing for the night. She stands at the backyard-facing nursery window in footie pajamas and the pink-bowed bonnet we use to keep the processors on. She scowls down at the audible mirth below, which she can hear even through the closed window. She looms, disapproving, like the world\u2019s tiniest \u201cKaren,\u201d as if she\u2019s going to report them to the HOA for a noise-ordinance violation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another: \u201cMama, I hear a woodpecker,\u201d my daughter says, registering the percussive drill through hollow wood that resonates through the woods we\u2019re walking through. She\u2019s correct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another: While playing with blocks, my daughter shows me a new accessory she\u2019s built for some angular, Lego-dimension character. I say, \u201cOh, cool pirate hat!\u201d She says: \u201cIt\u2019s a pilot<\/em> hat,\u201d detecting the minuscule difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One more: When getting dressed for school in her room upstairs, I hear my daughter sing: \u201cYou\u2019re my soda pop! My little soda pop!\u201d I think: From down here, I\u2019d never have known if she\u2019d been signing the song instead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I share these scenes on Facebook. They\u2019re easy for my hearing friends to like. People click on the thumbs-up, they click on the heart. Sometimes they even click on the laughing face. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Deaf Like Me<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

But there are things I mostly keep to myself, not wanting to seem ungrateful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such as: Sometimes I hate this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How her brain has to work harder than other kids\u2019 to process every word and sound, so that by the end of the schoolday, she\u2019s as tired as if she\u2019s crammed for college exams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She removes her devices and dives in, able to breathe there.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Seeing her run on Field Day, the devices falling off, tripping her up, holding her back. Knowing that having the devices in her life means special equipment forever: Special headbands for P.E., sports, theme-park rides, bounce houses. Special waterproof cases for the beach. A special lanyard with a microphone for her teachers to wear. Everything \u201cspecial,\u201d like \u201cspecial education.\u201d My daughter has a sort of extra report card\u2014an IEP\u2014that grades how she\u2019s doing with her disability (if you consider deafness to be one). One category is \u201cself-advocacy.\u201d This means: Does she speak up if she can\u2019t hear?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The constant attention to battery power\u2014are the lights blinking green, or orange? Are her batteries charged? Away from home\u2014did we bring the charger? Forget about living off the grid. Power outages that go on for more than a few hours are cause for panic. We are a family powered by electricity. A modern family. Meet the Jetsons.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, technical frustrations aside\u2014my daughter seems proud to be Deaf. She says that she\u2019s \u201crare.\u201d She wants a puppy\u2014a Dalmatian, because so many are deaf. She wants a deaf one. \u201cHe\u2019ll be Deaf like me! I can teach him sign language.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fact: A 2020 study presented in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine<\/em> showed that deafness among Dalmatians in the United Kingdom is in decline \u201cthanks to careful breeding decisions,\u201d which include selecting only hearing dogs to produce puppies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Ballad of Land and Sea <\/h5>\n\n\n\n

There are times my daughter goes to a place I\u2019m unable to go, even to visit. I can never truly know it as she does. She removes her devices and dives in, able to breathe there. It\u2019s a place beyond foghorn, beyond the churn of waves, beyond whalesong. It\u2019s a slippery place of gestures. I can only reach her through gestures. There was a time when this scared me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lights on her devices blink orange when the batteries need to be changed. I used to bolt to the charger for fresh batteries\u2014twist, twist off the old ones; twist, twist on the new ones. Each second in between felt like holding my breath underwater. I wanted to save her from that dark place that was so unknowable for me. It was the only choice I knew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I know she\u2019s okay there. It\u2019s her natural environment. Like an empty nester, I only hope she visits me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I see that in addition to facts, I\u2019ve been clinging to fairy tales. Conquering my terrors through metaphor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A metaphor: I stand on the shore and wave as my daughter plays in the ocean with others born like her. I can\u2019t join them; I\u2019m a landlubber, a dry-lander. Born with legs instead of a shimmering tail. I stand and hold a big fluffy towel for when she decides to come out. When she emerges\u2014a shape-shifter, thanks to our deal with a sea witch\u2014ready to join me, we wave to those who remain in the water, free from devices and noise. We snap on the devices, nestle them in her sand-colored hair. Her eyes are still blue like the sea. She is sand and sea; she is both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lights blink green when they\u2019re working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blink, blink. Goodbye, mermaids. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Goodbye, Mermaids by Christie Chapman \u201cFor me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.\u201d – Carl Sagan, scientist Wind brushed the trees, like a mother brushing the long flowy hair of a can\u2019t-sit-still little one. My baby daughter, who was born […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1807,"featured_media":308983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6181],"tags":[6378,820,178,6187,1263],"class_list":["post-308972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personalnarrative","tag-ableism","tag-disability","tag-family","tag-motherhood","tag-parenthood"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Was Lost When My Daughter Gained Sound - Electric Literature<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Before my daughter\u2019s surgery, I wanted to make the right choice\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/what-was-lost-when-my-daughter-gained-sound\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Was Lost When My Daughter Gained Sound - 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