Raymond Luczak
Words: 629
[Response to "Family Quotes"]

Editor's Note: Readers are invited to suggest a thing, person, place, event, or concept for Raymond Luczak to write about. You can suggest anything up to three words and send it to editor@clercscar.com and Raymond will pick one to respond to each week.

When one of my sisters emailed our family asking for sayings that we heard often while growing up, she was thinking of humorous quotes along the lines of "Quit throwing that ball in the house" and "Who are these kids, and why are they calling me Mom?" They would be incorporated into our upcoming family reunion's program book.

I would've liked to add a quote that I heard a lot when I couldn't follow the conversation around the dinner table: "I'll tell you later." (I have eight siblings and I am the only one Deaf.)



Of course, almost no one told me anything later. If I could earn a dollar for each time I heard that growing up, I'd have become a millionaire, but if I earned a dollar for each time someone actually told me later, I'd have remained dirt poor. Another quote whenever I followed up? "Not right now. I'm busy." Another? "Oh, gee, I forgot."

I had hoped that the passage of time, and educated enlightenment, would warm my siblings into welcoming me, a Deaf gay man, into their arms.



But it's become clear to me that their love for me is conditional. They would love me more if I were straight, hearing, religious, apolitical, and married with children. (Never mind the fact that I've accepted that they lead a lifestyle completely unlike my own, or that almost no one fingerspells even if I can't understand a particular word on the lips.)

The Deaf community doesn't seem to care that much about these kinds of expectations. They appreciate the unfiltered clarity of communication; this unifies us in spite of our many differences, whether they be political or not. They care, as much as I do, that we make an effort to make ourselves understood, and that's where the undeniable power of sign comes in. It isn't just the compelling vision that soothes my eyes after lipreading; it's the sheer physicality of signing that makes me far whole than the mere sensation of imperfect speech guttering out of my throat.

One can hide behind wisps of words into the air with one's voice, but there is no ambush cover for hands conveying concepts in mere seconds. I love my hands because they can express my emotions far quicker, and more honestly, than mere spoken words can. Hearing friends inevitably remark on the dichotomy between my speaking and signing selves; they'd always thought that I was an animated talker, but no, I feel more emotionally in tune when I sign. If the reactions from people who know sign are of any indication, I am apparently very sign-witty and funny. Not worrying about the quality of my speech frees me to be more like my real self.

When I was at the Rainbow Alliance of the Deaf 2009 conference in Chicago recently, I felt whole again. It didn't matter where each of us had originated from; what mattered was that we all wanted to be together--all
364 of us!--for a week. We instinctively understood what it felt like to be second-class citizens because we were Deaf, or because we were lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, and intersex. The acceptance of each other among strangers and acquaintances felt far more unconditional than I'd felt from my own family. True family isn't about blood; it's understanding what is different from us so we can better accept and love each other in spite of our many flaws. Second-class citizenship hurts, period. Love is a many-flavored picnic that would come up empty if it were limited to just the wine and cheese of speech and heterosexuality.



There is a quote I'd longed to hear as a child but never did: "I'll tell you right now."

You can quote me on that one.

=====
Raymond Luczak's latest book is Assembly required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life. Six of his poems appear in Deaf American Poetry, which is available at https://www.clercscar.com/books

Raymond's Web site is at https://www.raymondluczak.com