BUILDING 4.18.2013

I once lived with my family in a triple decker in Somerville, Mass. (My father says Summahville. I do too sometimes. When I've had a bit to drink or when fatigue is washing over me, the tongue of my childhood comes back to me—not that I ever wanted it to go.) My grandfather had bought it decades before, my father's father. In it, he and my grandmother had raised six children, living on the top two floors and having a tenant on the first. My father was the youngest, still is I suppose.

I was born at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, and I was brought home to this house on Lowell St. in Somerville. And two years later, my little brother was brought there too.

My brother is deaf, and my mother hard-of-hearing. I grew up with two languages: American Sign Language and English. My first sign was "milk," my first word "hi." I signed before I spoke.

I've never had any problems with hearing. I suppose one could say I was lucky in that regard, but from the way I've been raised, I don't perceive deafness as unlucky. I don't perceive silence to be taboo, or unwanted. It was my existence too, and continues to be.

Silence was my home, is my home.

Conversation came at times, catching up after school with my mother or my grandmother—who continued to live on the floor below us. I could hear the sound of my father's Chrysler mini-van coming around the corner from Barstow Ave. I'd announce his arrival. My mother could always rely on that. The sound of the TV I remember, all those shows that I watched day after day with my brother, side by side: Darkwing Duck, Square One, Punky Brewster, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Saved by the Bell.

(I watched Seinfeld with my grandmother too. She made me toast and tea. The glass kettle whistling away in the kitchen.)

My brother and I shared the couch and the remote, each of us on our separate cushion, passing the remote back to the other every half hour.

I knew some signs, but not all:

no

stop

thank you

you're welcome

please

my turn

share

food

drink

ready

want

now

Those are just some that come straight to mind. Our vocabulary was limited, but it was the vocabulary of young brothers. As we grow older, our lives grow more complicated, and the language between us has been striding to catch up.

My brother still looks for his place in life, as do I. 

When he was younger—when we were younger—he'd play with legos. He had several bins full, the accumulation of many sets all mixed up. The sounds that he would produce!  Croosh crooosh croooosshh! as he searched for the perfect piece. The brrrr beh beh beh noises that his lips would create, as he moved his car creations along the floor—the sounds of engines that he'd felt, many times, deep in his chest.

He built within his silence as a silence built within me, in Somerville, on Lowell St., in my grandfather's triple decker home.