I CAN'T HEAR YOU DARLING!

Naked fingers delicately paint the air with earnest volition. A woman in her late thirties is sitting cattycorner from me in a coffee shop. She is deaf. The man across from her has dark skin, maybe in his early or mid-forties. His soft eyes move along with her hands, absorbing and translating. He is speaking methodically, enunciating each syllable. The sounds he is making are of no value to her, she can only understand his lips.

Tables are strewn with textbooks and the small space is littered with Saturday afternoon enthusiasm. People with running shoes and dog leashes are sipping lattés. But through the minutia of the busy coffee shop, his voice is the only one I can hear.

His language is universally spoken and her language is not. I wonder what it feels like to observe life quickly swirling around you, a quicksand of time drowned by silence, and not be able to say anything about it. And the same loud world is blind to her. I wonder if the glass wall is rose-colored, or does she even notice it exists? I wonder if the silence keeps her from her feeling chilly and isolated, as painful words have the power to do. Do voices make her feel invisible or maybe invincible because she might not know how many words, discussions, and feelings are wasted or neglected? Words are so easy to toss around when there is little effort in receiving them. Might there be any freedom in living a life mute of nonsense?

Did they both go to trouble to learn how to understand the other? All that for a date?

It’s odd. Typing and people watching, a joyful scenario any writer can relish, and recently I’ve run out of what to say. My paragraphs are mechanically imperfect and my thoughts lack structured coherence, but every sentence is woven together with truth as much as confusion. Each word inserted not for cadence, but rather for interpretation. Enough of a twist to separate myself from the text messages and emails and bored journalists, you have to reread, only if to forget. While not oppositional, truth and confusion are close cousins, one often resulting in the other, a by-product or a leftover… Life seems to be layered with uncovering truth and subsequently being confused knowing it now exists. Threatening or benign, truth can’t be deleted or recovered, it just is, and the only choice we have is to accept it, or walk away.

“I did let them know our plan was to quietly celebrate in the mountains, just the two of us. Or I thought I made it clear. ” He explained with frustrated scrawled on his face.
About five seconds passed where she deftly orchestrated motions into the air. Not placidity, but she was calm with a reassuring nod.
“I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want a bunch of people over to your place, go grocery shopping and cook, etc. with moving next weekend. Do we need to call a moving company?” His voice dropped an octave.

She didn’t sign back. Instead reached for both of his hands.

I hope I can pack all 171,000 Oxford approved words into my cranium. Extracting the appropriate idiom or synonym, inserting it into conversation, so the person with whom I’m speaking can accurately understand me. But dialogue is a struggle. Microsoft Word allows me to backspace, add and shuffle sentences around, so when I hit save, or send, it’s done with cognizance. Packaged, wrapped with spell check and removed of any extraneous blunders that otherwise would have weaseled their way into a phone call or after dinner cocktails.

And so I digress. This woman gently staring into the eyes of this man, understands exactly what he is feeling and with no audible exchange. I’m starting to wonder if maybe words can be more of a barrier than a bridge.

American Sign Language has 7,200 expressions. Does she desire such dexterity, intimacy with a convoluted vocabulary, 26 letters that if formulated correctly can create literature, masterpieces and lyrics, newspapers and opinions? If you don’t know how the words sound can your conscious talk to you inside of your head? Or is there just the peaceful silence I still fail to locate in my sleep.

Reaching for her bag, a strange emptiness swept over me. I guess these two people, who probably haven’t noticed I’m sitting across the room watching them gave me a silly hope that some things might be worth fighting for, had to go.

Before the two walked away, abandoning me with iTunes and a hundred images to dissect and reassemble. I saw him do something that I know every couple does. He lips parted and without a sound he mouthed, “I love you.”