You asked me to write about a moment from my childhood with my two deaf brothers and sisters. I couldn't manage it; but here are some thoughts instead. It's something I lived through deeply, and I wanted to share it. My childhood years were the most beautiful of my life—as a sister, as a daughter, and as a girl.
I have a brother and a sister, Michele and Francesca, who are deaf. Both graduated from business school, both work, both are married, and together they have three little girls: Michele's daughters are Giovanna and Giuseppina; Francesca's is Liliana.
I often remember when we were children: five rowdy kids inventing games around the house—there was the family game, where Michele and I were the heads of household; and the magic castle game, which we built with blankets, using beds and chairs and whatever else we could find.
I remember too, though with sadness, the times I went with my father to Moffetta, where there was an institute, the Apicella, reserved back then for deaf children. At first we all went together, just visiting on Sundays; then they let us take my brother and sister home for weekends. So on Saturday, after school, my father and I would drive out. When we arrived at the Apicella, a weight would settle on my heart because I knew my father would send me ahead to find my siblings. In the boys' ward all the little ones would crowd around me and stare: I felt lucky if they were busy playing ball. In the girls' ward they were mostly shy, peeking at me from their hiding places—except for a few who seemed eager to meet me.
Still, I was happy to come home with Michele and Francesca. Francesca kept the same habits at home that she had at the institute, and woe to Cristina, my other sister, or me if we touched anything of hers. She got irritable often—more than Michele, who was easygoing by nature. Francesca would ask us why she was deaf, and so we'd find ourselves trying to explain the absurdity—still a mystery—that the doctors had told our parents. Why her and not us?
Even though she was older than me, when she wasn't at the institute she was the most spoiled, even by us younger sisters, though we'd grow frustrated having to explain what others said and especially what came on television. Now I think back on those moments with deep nostalgia, and if I could turn back time, I'd return to those years to avoid making the same mistakes.
My nieces, who both have deaf parents, carry this condition too. Giuseppina has some hearing. Today my brother and sister know they have a 25 percent chance of having hearing children, but Francesca stopped at Liliana.
They are wonderful girls, beautiful and bright. The team that works with them says they could make progress thanks to new tools that exist—progress not in hearing itself, but in how they communicate with others; it all depends on us, family, friends, acquaintances, people around them.
I am sure that today, and even more so in the future, I will no longer hear people like my brother and sister mistreated in the workplace simply because they don't hear and it's hard to understand them; nor will I hear children, ignorant and thoughtless, ask: "Are they foreign? Do they speak German? Are they deaf and dumb too?"
— Nicoletta Amato, 1989