Foreword

By the time I apparated outside, the leaves were on fire. I looked at my surroundings. It dawned on me that I was at my childhood home at 1645 Queens Road West Charlotte, NC in the early 80s. It is a stately brick home on the winding road through the posh Myers Park neighborhood. The famous Willow Oaks dot the lawns of houses on this picturesque drive. Magnolia trees, although fewer in number, are present in the neighborhood. I look up the 3 brick steps to the French doors leading to the den, the main entry point to the house. To my left, the brick patio with its 8 foot brick wall stretches behind me to the front iron gate. Beyond the gate, slate footpath disappeared into the green lawn of the house. The 2 foot high brick interior wall bordering the patio held the prickly holly bushes. I face the backyard. There is a makeshift tree house under the overhang of a neighbor’s tree. Behind it, the playset has squeaky steel swings held with rusted chains. Further back was a small doghouse for the family pet, Abby.

I heard a clatter and sprinkle of paint from a brush. I looked more closely at the noise. It dawned on me that there is little me playing in her cute but makeshift ‘treehouse’. She dipped the paintbrush in the orange high viscosity oil paint. Taking her thumb to the wet paintbrush, she splatters the bright orange paint on the white door propped on the side of the tall brick wall. She doesn’t paint the door a solid orange, she leaves the sprays of paint. Lost in her world, she doesn’t see future Laura standing on the brick patio. Little did we know that the color orange would play a starring role in our life story.

I fought the urge to run to my younger self, cover her, and protect her from the world. I was taken aback by the realization that I was committing the same as my mother and ex-husband did — they had shielded me from the real world. The dark rose colored glasses were ripped from my face in 2014 when I realized that society only saw me serving a single purpose — that of a wife and mother, no more. I felt and still do feel that I can serve many purposes beyond that of being a wife and mother. I saw myself as a smart, capable, and productive person. I rebel society’s expectations of me through my life examples. If only the world saw this. That is the genesis of my book. If only my memories were misty. It would ease the pain of this book but I write it as a catharsis. I shout to her, “Little girl, little girl, pull up your bootstraps, you’ve got a wild, wild ride ahead of you”. She continues playing. My head bows and I apparate out of the scene. The glowing embers of the leaves twirl in the empty air.

Thus begins my story…

When The Sun Comes Back

1645 Queens Road West

The Queen City

North Carolina

Episode 1

“Mommy, when the sun comes back, can we go to Freedom Park?”

“Yes, honey, we can go to the park tomorrow.”

I open this book with those quotes to demonstrate the importance of language development. Those quotes show that I did not know of the word tomorrow and replaced it with ‘when the sun comes back’. Mom corrected me by teaching me the concept of tomorrow. I was younger than five at that time. The window of opportunity for language development closes at age five for most people. For deaf people, such as myself, this window of opportunity is crucial. Mom suspected my deafness at six months of age and had me tested by one audiologist who panned it off as “she’s just being a kid, she’ll grow out of this phase”. Mom got a second opinion. The second audiologist confirmed Mom’s suspicions. From then on, life was changed.

Mom researched the many ways of raising a d/Deaf child and settled on Total Communication (TC) since it encompassed all the possible ways to communicate ranging from gestures, body language, signed, oral, written, visual aids to American Sign Language (ASL). Naturally, she immediately enrolled me in speech therapy at the earliest age possible, which was age one. She began learning sign language and chose Signing Exact English (SEE), which is what I grew up learning but later transitioned to Pigeon Sign Language (PSE). PSE is between ASL and SEE. There is a range of ASL fluency. She almost shipped me off to the Clarke Oral School in Pennsylvania because she thought my English development would be better; alas, she was told I was too deaf to be oral, which is why she settled on TC.

I don’t even remember learning to sign or swim since I was exposed to both before one years old. My first memory of signing is when I was in preschool at a local church. Mom was talking to the preschool teacher while holding me. This sort of preschool was similar to today’s Head Start classes in that there were other disabled kids in there along with me. One thing that sticks out in Mom’s mind about that class is that I caught pinkeye from another kid with disabilities. Other than that, it was pretty standard. She told the teacher that I could sign ‘dog’. Mom prompted me to sign it to the teacher by saying “What/who is Abby?”. I slapped my hand on my thigh and snapped my fingers, the sign for ‘dog’. “Yay, you’re so good!” Mom says. The teacher said, “Well, she’s very advanced for her age to be able to communicate! Whoa.” Mom readjusts me on her hip and beams.

In the meantime, I was in speech therapy everyday for an hour with Ms. V. I’m calling her Ms. V because she got educated at Vanderbilt in Tennessee. I realize that most people probably wonder how to teach a one year old speech but it’s really more about getting their voices and interactions with the world started. So, even though I don’t remember the babbling stage going to the vowel and consonant development, Ms. V played a huge role in my life. I spent ten years in speech therapy with Ms. V during my formative years. My name was Laura Rhyne Cranfill, known as Laura. My point being is that for most deaf people, the following consonants or vowels are hard for us to say: L, S, J, Z. Since my name has Ls in it, I had to practice, practice, and practice until I was blue in the face. Ms. V was tired of demonstrating the position of the tongue in order to produce the ‘L’ sound, in which the tongue goes up against the roof of the mouth. So, she drew a ‘L’ on a post-it with an up arrow and put it on the bookcase opposite me. When my name would sound like Aura or Maura or Naura, she would take her pen or pencil and tap the post-it to let me know to repeat. Speech therapy is exhausting.

One of the reverse psychology techniques Mom used on me in order to get me to speak instead of sign or gesture is that she would intentionally ignore me if I would sign to her instead of speak. I had to use my voice in order to be heard at home. In order to ensure clear communication, Mom enrolled me in speech therapy where I spent voluminous amounts of time just rehearsing roots, combinations of vowels and consonants, names, and difficult-to-pronounce letters/combinations of letters.

Mom also trained my family on how to communicate with me by telling them to always speak clearly. This was somewhat easy considering this is a southern family with all the variations of drawn out words and phrases. They all did it eagerly for the most part. I do remember family members always making sure to include me in everything that was happening. However, to this day, none know sign except B (brother) knows the sign for “NO”. It was and is his favorite sign. That’s all he would ever use.

I spent an hour everyday after school in speech therapy while all the kids were outside playing. Afterwards, Mom would drive 5 minutes to our house in Myers Park, perfectly situated on a corner lot in a tony neighborhood. Charlotte is known for three things: the Reverend Billy Graham, banking businesses, and Nascar. Those would leave an indelible impression on my life.