IslandRoar

Native Islanders

 
  

The Wampanoag are the Native American people that first settled Martha's Vineyard thousands of years ago.

Tribal legend has it that the Wampanoag giant, Moshup, dragged his toe in the ocean and formed the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard.

The scientific explanation is that the islands were once part of the mainland, and that, as the sea rose after the last Ice Age, the people who were to become the island Wampanoag merely decided to stay.

The Tribe was federally acknowledged in 1987. Today, the up-island town of Aquinnah is home to the Wampanoag. Here are most of the Tribal-owned lands, Tribal housing, and the Tribe's museum and cultural center.

The Wampanoag influence is an integral part of present day Martha's Vineyard culture.

Recently I was thinking about what it must have been like, to be part of the Tribe back in the day, before the white settlers. When nobody had ever heard of Martha's Vineyard, but instead, called this place Noepe, the Wampanoag word for land amid the streams.

There were several different villages scattered throughout the island, but even so, there must have been reasons to push the birch-bark canoes into the sea and venture off-island, seven miles across the sound to the mainland.

Tribal councils with the mainland Wampanoag? Hunting trips pursuing animals that didn't live here, such as bears or wolves? Marriages arranged to bring new blood on-island and off?

Then I thought, were these early islanders the same type of curiosity that modern-day vineyarders appear to be to many folks? Did the mainland Indians come up to them at, say, a wedding feast, and ask, "So, what's it like to live on an island?" Or, "What do you all do out there all winter?"

Because, though day-to-day Wampanoag living was probably much the same on or off-island, just as it is today for vineyarders and mainlanders, like today, there must've been some obvious differences.

Wampanoag from Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket were whalers extraordinaire. They are said to have taught the early white settlers this trade, thus kick-starting the whole whaling industry.

No such whaling on the mainland. But more human interaction maybe? Better game? Easier trading? Certainly, like today, more choices. And without having to paddle your canoe for hours across the sea, fighting the wind and waves.

It takes a certain type of person to live on an island. Let's face it; it takes a certain type of person to live just about anywhere you can think of.

And maybe it's just wistful thinking or plain craziness, but it dawned on me that I might have a lot more in common with these early Native islanders than I ever could have imagined.

 

At A Loss (part two)

 

If you haven't read Part One of this post, you can find it here.

 

After she got her hearing aids, Daughter #2's speech grew by big fat leaps and bounds.

In those first few weeks, she would cock her head to the side, exclaiming, "I hear sum-tin!" Then run to the door or window to check out what it was. I couldn't believe how much she'd been missing.

I steered myself for the years to come, the negotiations I would need to engage in, and the accommodations that would be necessary for her in the school system. In life. The uphill battle certain things would be for her, things I had so taken for granted with my other kids.

Do you know some people treat children with hearing aids like they're mentally disabled or slow? Yeah, they do. And some people are uncomfortable at the mere site of a kid with hearing aids.

Fairly or not, I came to judge my older children's friends by how they handled D #2's disability.

"Is she retarded?" One little boy asked, sneering. As though she wasn't even in the room. STRIKE OUT.

"What's your sister got in her ears?" another asked.

"Those are her hearing aids." I could see First-Born Son almost holding his breath as he said this. "To help her hear."

"Oh." The boy shrugged. "Like bionic ears. Cool." HOME RUN.

I started saving for the tiny, but enormously expensive, hearing aids that would fit inside her ear and be practically invisible, the kind the audiologist assured me would be perfect for her as an adolescent.

Then, before she turned five, on a routine audiogram, her hearing tested almost normal. We'd been going every three or four months, to our same amazing audiologist, Ellen, each time.

Ellen didn't know what to make of it. Neither did the specialists she sent us to in Manhattan.

"I guess you might call it a miracle," one doctor said. "Except I don't believe in miracles."

The director of her school took me aside and quietly suggested that I not share what had happened with the other parents; she didn't want to encourage false hope.

Today, D #2 still has fluctuations in her hearing and does much better if she can look at someone as they speak, but she no longer wears hearing aids. She sits in the front of the class by choice, and she works really hard to overcome the learning difficulties she has as a result of those early years. Really hard.

And really successfully. She is driven in a way my two other children never had to be. She wants it. Bad.

This then, is my very un-scientific theory to explain what happened: I was so sick for that entire pregnancy. I only gained 13 pounds, and she was 7lbs, 14oz, with the biggest placenta the nurses had ever seen. Looking back, I think I may have had some viral infection that was passed on to her, affecting her hearing.

Unknowingly, I continued to pass on this virus to her through the next year and a half of nursing. Gradually, after she was weaned, the virus dissipated, leaving only residual damage, in the form of fluctuations in her hearing.

At least, that's my attempt at a logical explanation.

But as for what I really think happened?

Well, let's just say that, unlike that doctor, I do believe in miracles.

Wouldn't you?

At A Loss (part one)

The following story will be told over the next two posts.

 

Daughter #2 was born hearing impaired.

We had no idea of this at the time. All I knew was that her cry was the most high-pitched, piercing sound I had ever heard.  I was a pediatric nurse and she was my third child; I knew my newborn cries (I later learned this cry is common in newborns with hearing loss).

As she grew, we would lean in, cup our hand to her ear, and murmur, "Sssp-ssp-ssp," like we were telling her a secret. We called it the "Whisper Game," and I'd played it with all my kids. They loved it, and eventually, at about a year, leaned over to "whisper" a secret back to me.

D #2 did the same thing. Except she merely opened and closed her tiny lips, never uttering a sound. Foolishly, I found this quirky and adorable, not realizing she wasn't making the whisper sound because she couldn't hear it.

"That baby looks at your face so intently when you speak," my mother would say. Of course; she was trying to read our lips, attempting to make sense of the jumbled sounds she was able to hear.

I should've known. My two older children had spoken several words by the time they turned one and were chattering away by two.

There is a video of D #2 on Easter, only weeks before her second birthday. She picks up a candy egg and says "num-num." And I nearly erupt with joy. "Do you hear that? She said num-num," I inform the camera. "She means candy!"

That video will never be easy for me to watch.

Thinking maybe she just needed speech therapy like her cousins, I took her for an evaluation. Part of this was a routine audiological screening.

It was anything but routine. I held her while the audiologist directed sounds through speakers into our soundproof booth. As they grew higher in frequency, D #2 sat in my lap, thumb in her mouth, oblivious.

There was shock, guilt, sadness. Not necessarily in that order.

But other people took it harder than I did.  As an RN I knew what was out there: brain tumors, cancer, diabetes, cerebral palsy...

Hearing loss? We could do that.

I got her enrolled in a special school for kids with speech and hearing issues. I wove multi-colored friendship bracelets to clip her hearing aids onto the collar of her clothing with so they wouldn't get lost. I learned to use my stethoscope to test her aids and batteries each morning. Taught the babysitter, The Ex, and First-Born Son how to put them in and turn them on.

The first time she cupped her hand against my ear and "whispered"  to me with real "sssp-ssp-ssp" sounds, I nearly cried with relief. With her aids, her hearing was almost normal. Other kids at her school were not nearly so lucky.

My mother was appalled whenever I put her hair in ponytails. "But then everyone will see her hearing aids," she complained. "Don't you want to hide them?"

"She wears hearing aids," I said. "This is her life. If we don't accept it, how will she?"

More next post...

Liar, Liar

"Like You Breathe"


  

Lie is such a harsh, cringe-inducing word. When my ex and I went through the long process of unraveling our marriage, I wrote a lot of poetry. It was a great way to get out the pain, sadness, and anger. I always told him I was going to put the poems together into a book and title it "You Lie Like You Breathe."

Because he did. Lied without thinking or planning, and certainly without purpose. As though it was just something his brain and body did for him. Like blinking. Or breathing.

I never understood it. Why lie about something when you know you'll be found out? Why lie about incidental bullshit? Really, and more to the point, why lie? It was almost as if he couldn't stop himself, as if it was beyond his control.

Truth is important to me. "You'll never get in real trouble from me if you tell the truth." I repeated this to my children all the time when they were young. But that didn't stop my son.

He lied as a preschooler. No, really, he swore, he didn't make the baby cry or mess up his toys, when clearly he had. I didn't think too much of it till he was older and started lying frequently about schoolwork. He'd tell me his homework was done when it wasn't, or that he didn't have any when he did. He'd swear he hadn't gotten his grade back yet on a test when he had, or that there was no test that week when there was.

Eventually he was always found out. Again, I didn't get it. Was the momentary reprieve that lying resulted in worth the mess he inevitably had to deal with when his teachers and I made contact, or the report card arrived in the mail.

He didn't lie about too much else. It was more like a matter of convenience, a way to delay my finding out things that were going to mess up his plans to play video games after dinner, instead of studying. He seemed sincerely upset  and contrite when he was caught, but it kept happening, and over time I didn't know what to believe.

I started to seriously consider that this lying might be genetic, or at least have a genetic component. It might sound crazy, but scientific studies have suggested over the years that many aspects of personality, such as temperament, for example, and shyness, are  probably gene-related, .

Doesn't it make sense then, that lying might be as well? I see it almost like a genetic addiction, akin to being susceptible to drugs or alcohol.

First-Born Son and I have talked about this over the years. He remembers lying to his friends as a kid about completely random and ridiculous things, and for no apparent reason. Almost like a compulsion. He has no idea why. 

These days, he seems to have it much better controlled. To his credit, he sees it for the weakness it is, and appears dedicated to battling the impulse. He understands that even if some study proved lying was genetic, that would not be an excuse to give in to the behavior.

At least, that's what he says. I think I believe him, but I realize by now that he is so good at it he can even fool himself.

And that's the real problem, isn't it? Lying eats away at trust. At its worst, it is capable of destroying relationships.

What do you think? Did you ever find yourself lying for no reason? Do you have a spouse, a parent, or a child who who seems to do it without thinking?

Maybe, like my ex, there are a lot of people who "lie like they breathe." Maybe they truly don't know how to stop themselves. But that doesn't make it okay.

Genes

Black Irish

My dad is coming up for my daughter's high school graduation in a couple of weeks. I just ordered one of those DNA testing kits, the kind where you do a cheek swab and mail it in for analysis.

I've been meaning to do this for at least a year and I keep forgetting. Both my parents are coming, but for now I'm only interested in testing my dad. For one thing, those kits are expensive, at least a hundred bucks. But the other thing is that my parents had two daughters, me and my sister. No sons. This means that some components of my dad's DNA, those that  travel only on the Y chromosome, have not been passed down.

Sure, he has brothers who have sons, and these cousins of mine no doubt share plenty of the same DNA my dad has. But what he got pure and true from his parents? Well, that will die out when he's gone.

Ever since I found this out I've been meaning to order this DNA testing kit. I started researching them on line last year. But then I kept forgetting. It's as though some part of me wants to go on blithely assuming he'll be here forever, and we can do this test any old time.

I don't see him very often. And he's had a tough time the past year. He's only (only!) 77, but he had tuberculosis when he was 19 and has fought respiratory battles ever since. He's always been in great shape, walking every day instead of hopping on the bus all those years he worked in Manhattan, lifting weights, swimming.

But his lungs fight him every step of the way. I'm a nurse. I know the drill. I know better than to take one single day for granted.

My dad is full-blooded Irish. Both his parents were immigrants here in the early 1920's, from Belfast. Yet he has black hair and dark brown eyes. Whether his "Black Irish" looks come from the Spanish Armada shipwreck myth, the ancient Irish legend of Milesians who settled Ireland from Spain, or some other long forgotten, gene-induced mystery, remains to be seen.

But I have red hair, freckles, and green/blue eyes like my mother. My kids are blue or green-eyed.

My father has always been somewhat of a mystery to me. Mapping his genes may not change that. But I'd like to do it all the same.