Chapter 1: The Workmanship
I was searching, as a snake wandering through the wilderness, but unsure exactly what I was searching for. Everyday, I received just what I needed from the hands of God in order to keep going, learning, and trusting. I had no idea what I was in for the spring of my junior year in high school, the trail that God had predestined for me to follow in order to bring me slowly, ever into his likeness.
Near the beginning of the semester, a meeting with the principal of the school loomed over my head. With everything in my being, I dreaded it, praying the meeting would be canceled or that I would get sick, but as the time neared and neither of my prayers were answered, I just asked God for wisdom that I might know how to respond to the principal, Mr. Rummers. His office was dark with a single dim lamp casting shadows across his face. In fact, the shadow of his glasses left his eyes hard to see and his lips hard to read. He complained about my recent decline in grades. Having known this was coming, I was prepared with my defense. I wrote down on a piece of paper that I was only doing so poorly because I had stopped speaking. Since then, I had begun flunking oral exams and presentations, although I should have been flunking them all along because no one could understand me when I spoke. Mr. Rummers then tormented me with his dim lips and concealed eyes, urging me to keep trying to speak, and reminding me how far I had come with lip-reading (so that I didn’t even need an interpreter for my classes), and assuring me that just such a thing could happen with my speech. However, Mr. Rummers, sitting back in his desk chair, with an immovable expression plastered across his face like a fortress which separated his world from mine, had no way of imagining what a monster speech could be. He had never known the feeling of doing away with it, as if chaining a vicious monster to a stake and setting it on fire. It was wonderful. But Mr. Rummers let me know that if I did not learn to speak, my life would be basically useless. Against these harsh ideas, I tried to copy his expression, to set my face like flint with no emotion, but the pain boiling inside of me was torture to mask. I feared the principal could see right through me.
When I was dismissed, the soft wind of the outside world greeted my face, cooling all that had boiled inside of me. My father had been waiting for me in the lone car in the parking lot. I used my natural means of communication—American Sign Language—to convey to him what Mr. Rummers had told me. But my father seemed to think little of Mr. Rummers’s concerns, signing to me that, as the Bible says, I was God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God had before ordained that I should walk in them. In comparison with God’s viewpoint, the speculations of my school principal were unimportant.
So, with my hope battled on against despair and my faith against doubt, I rested my head against the vibrating car window as my father drove us home. The feeling of uselessness was always chasing and taunting me and it was only further fueled by Mr. Rummers remarks. I cried out to God in the constant silence of my mind, pleading that He might take me and what little I had to offer and use me for His glory in order to accomplish His purpose.
Home was a small, ordinary-looking place, crammed into a neighborhood with miniscule yards. No flowers adorned the bushy garden outside—no flowers dancing like little, bright fairies in the wind to signify individuality or profess to passers-by of a feminine heart within the home’s brick walls. Yet this place welcomed us through the garage and into the kitchen. Once inside, the aroma of wood greeted me and I welcomed it gladly, for to me it was the scent of peace, work, and stability. Though the house held little furniture and few luxuries, there was no place I would have preferred to return to after that painstaking meeting with Mr. Rummers than this simple place.
Walking through the sawdust which covered the floor, I got a glass of water and sat down at the kitchen table, while my father turned on some music, sat down on the couch in the living room, and fashioned guitar parts. In my own silent world, I endeavored to focus my freshly wounded mind on American History, forcing myself to think in terms of questions, blanks, and complete sentence answers.
In the course of an hour, however, I had moved from a world of words to a world of wood, sitting on the opposite side of the couch from my father, gluing guitar parts together. My father and I worked intently without much signing—for our hands and eyes were preoccupied with the wood. This was the tranquil community we shared, sanctified from the clamor of the world outside. Though the world cut at us and abandoned us, this was our haven of healing.
At six o’clock, we washed the sawdust and wood glue from our hands and began making a dinner characteristic of us—one which combined rice, chilly, and which ever spices appeared most tasteful to us at the time. Above the steaming pans on the oven, we signed leisurely about making guitar deliveries, things going on at our church, and interesting facts I had learned at school that day.
I told my father that I was invited to James’s house the following night along with Elizabeth. The three of us—James, Elizabeth, and I—were the only deaf students at our school, and we had been close friends since the deaf school we had begun in, with the focus and the end thereof being public, mainstream education. Still, as high school students, and James about to graduate, we stuck together through the currents, all of us inefficient communicators. James, who had lost his hearing at the age of five, could talk decently, but was not a lip-reader; I, having lost my hearing at three, could read lips, but had given up on speech; and Elizabeth, who was born deaf, could neither speak nor read lips. These “flaws” were evident to everyone, leading to our ostracism by the hearing students. To befriend one of us was to deface oneself, and it had been this way since grade school. We, the few, the deaf, though tragically unconformable, were still lost in the mad rush of the mainstream. Only, we all knew we could not end were everyone else was ending. We were different.
After dinner, my father and I pulled out two of our handcrafted guitars. My father began strumming some chords in the key of F. Noting this, my fingers drifted into picking solo notes up and down the frets and strings. The feeling of the wood, smooth beneath my finger, and the steel strings, pliable to my touch, indulged me. I lost myself in the vibrations. After a while, with my fingers still moving, I looked up into my father’s deep, brown eyes. Perhaps the darkness of his eyes drove many people away from him, but it welcomed me in. His hair was dark brown also and curly. A short, unkempt beard surrounded his face providing him with a rustic appearance. My eyes dropped down to his moving fingers, which were also rustic with work and practice so that looking at them caused respect and pride to grow in my heart. Certainly, we were not a typical family, but we loved what we had—what we had been given of God.
As one fighting the ocean current, I struggled through the crowded hall at school the next morning, toward my locker. It was 6:55. If I did not get to homeroom by 7:00, I knew the teacher would take pleasure in mocking me before the entire class. She did it to everyone who was late, but she always found more to ridicule me about.
When I was near my locker, I saw Elizabeth surrounded by a group of students. The students’ mouths were moving rapidly and Elizabeth, unable to read lips, was simply trying to find a way past them. Because I knew exactly what the students were saying, my urgency to get to class instantly evaporated as my emotions suddenly boiled in anger. I pushed through the group of students which enclosed Elizabeth, conscious that this action had thrown at least one person to the ground. Putting my arm around Elizabeth, I broke through the other side of the group. Without looking back to see the damage I had caused, I walked with Elizabeth to her homeroom, my arm around her securely, until she sat down at her desk.
When she thanked me, respect revealed itself through her eyes. And as I turned to find myself lost again in the ocean of the hallway, working my way back to my locker, I could still see Elizabeth’s relieved face in my mind, her weak smile, her sparkling eyes, her blonde, wavy hair. She was a sort of angelic princess, always there in the corner of my mind, and it was my duty and privilege to protect her. The look she had given me which said that she needed and trusted me was well-worth what I knew was coming when I entered homeroom at 7:05.
As I took my seat at the front of the class, the teacher put on a sarcastic smile and, through it, asked me what had happened. She started with questioning about the little things, remarking that perhaps I had forgotten to set my alarm, or enjoyed my shower to much. But eventually she came to sharper ideas, saying perhaps my girlfriend had broken up with me, and that was what made me late, as pleasure in her own wittiness lit her face. Even when I started to write something down, she stopped me, telling me this was not writing class and that she wanted an answer. With a smile still plastered across her face, she said she sensed a lack of respect at my not answering her. It was utterly mortifying. Though I could not hear the laughter, I could sense it, which was probably worse. I forced myself to faze out completely and asking God to give me patience and a sound mind, to be “slow to anger and abounding in love,” as Paul puts it, as anything else would end me in detention.
When I arrived at James’s house that night, I was greeted first by his two youngest sisters, Jessica and Jenna, who swarmed me with hugs and then skipped hastily away into the kitchen. The aroma of lasagna coming from the place of their retreat made me want to follow them, but I forced myself momentarily ignore the smell and look for James.
As I neared the den of their house, it seemed to nearly vibrate as James’s two brothers, lay on top of him, wrestling with him. When James saw me enter the room, he flung his brothers off onto the ground. He then signed to me, thanking God I had come to save him from Joseph and Jared. After looking over at the twelve-year-old and eleven-year-old, I responded by signing that I did not think us a good match for them. Joseph and I against James and Jared looked fairer. But James let me know he did not think that was an even match either, reminding me of his being four inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than me. I assured him, however, the odds were in my team’s favor, though I did not explain how. The younger boys were eager to begin. So, without a signal or the establishment of any rules, we slammed into each other, shoving, pulling, twisting, struggling, persevering, drawing back, then slamming again.
When Elizabeth walked into the room, everyone saw her, but no one stopped. James clearly became more desperate to get the upper hand after her entrance, but I also became more resistant to his taking it.
Suddenly, Joseph and Jared drew back. We signed to them, asking what had happened, and they replied that it was time for dinner. Though we were all panting from striving and sweat was dripping down our faces, all of our former efforts were instantly of no importance. We greeted Elizabeth as if we had just noticed her entrance. James kissed her cheek and placed his sweaty arm around her as we went into the dining room.
At the Kirkpatrick house, each person spoke and signed simultaneously, although James was the only deaf member of the family. Tonight, the mood around the table was light and refreshing after the tedious week of school, with the bright prospects of the weekend before us. I was intrigued by Jessica’s determined efforts to cut her own lasagna despite the offers of everyone at the table, not knowing she had already received offers, volunteering to cut it for her. James, who worked for his father’s company, was discussing a work situation with his father, as Elizabeth watched with interest. Julie, James’s fourteen-year-old sister, was telling her mom about being offered drugs at school that day. The four youngest children were too caught up in eating for making much conversation, although at intervals they would burst out with some nugget of information. I sat slowly taking in the food, looking from person to person in the warmth of the atmosphere, enjoying my feeling of invisibility for as long as it might last.
After dinner, we played an aggressive game of “Spoons.” The game is not solely about skill; it has much to do with one’s degree of viciousness as well. So, it was not surprising that James and Joseph were the ones to make it to the last round. At that point, the game is only luck. Joseph won, by chance.
When James, Elizabeth and I were in James’s room later that evening, James made a point to ridicule my poor skills at the game of “Spoons.” But Elizabeth stood up for me, reminding James that I was probably a wonderful guitar player, though the two of them couldn’t know, and that I at least looked cool when I played. Elizabeth and I looked at each other, smiling like two siblings might when they find themselves on the same side of a conflict. James reminded me of how weird Elizabeth’s grandmother thought I was when we were little kids and all I ever did was play guitar, despite my being deaf. I did not remember that. When I thought of Elizabeth’s grandmother, Mrs. Anderson, I could think of nothing but raking her yard for her in the fall and her repaying us with chocolate chip cookies and telling us stories about child-eating monsters. We asked Elizabeth how her grandmother was doing and she told her grandmother was doing very poorly, almost to the point of having to go into a nursing home. I, who had had no idea that things were so bad, looked away, ashamed I had not asked about Mrs. Anderson more recently.
If Mrs. Anderson went into a nursing home before Elizabeth graduated, James told me that Elizabeth would move in with his family for her senior year. At that time, James would have a full time position with his father’s company. After that, we all knew what was going to happen—James and Elizabeth were going to get married, get their own house, and start their own family. Though their anticipation seemed to grow as the time drew closer, that night the idea remained like the moon seen through the window, neither spoken of nor reached for, but present, still, in its resplendence.
I, on the other hand, faced the future without direction. Perhaps, after I graduated, I would go to college or perhaps I would simply become a luthier like my father and put in more hours in the workshop at home. Honestly, I would be content with anything, as long as God would place me in His will.
1 comment:
You are becomming an awesome writer. I enjoyed reading this part of the story an look forward to more.
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