![]() ![]() I did some research and found that raising a chimp alongside one’s child is actually a surprisingly common occurrence. I thought about that story for many years, and then I decided I wanted to write about it. My older sisters lamented a lost playmate. My father grumbled about the loss of a good deal-the mysterious institution, never named in her recollections, would have given them a house in Westchester County, rent free, and a car. ![]() And then leave it behind, when we would move-it was too cruel,” she’d explain. “I realized I’d have to raise that animal as my own. To my sisters’ and father’s eternal disappointment, my mother said no. She interviewed for the job, and they wanted her right away when they found out one of her daughters was 2 years old. She was living in Brooklyn and taking advanced signing classes at Hunter College. This was before I was born, when she was a newlywed. But my favorite story of where her curiosity took her-well, almost took her-was to a research institution in upstate New York, to live with a chimp and raise it. To the backwoods of 1970s Maryland to work with the developmentally disabled children warehoused in the state’s asylums, about to be released into a world that wasn’t ready for them. To a deaf university, Gallaudet, for graduate school. It is a trait that’s led her many places in her life. Our mother learned to sign because she is, above all, a curious person. She is almost never at a loss for words, but when my sisters and I were younger we did our best to overwhelm her, to see what it took to get her words to go and her signing to take over. ![]() Like all the women in my family, my mother loves language-gusts of words and coaxings and questions, always questions. “You’re doing it again!” one of us would shriek, and she would catch herself and sigh, exasperated, “Girls.” Usually she only ever got as far as signing “stop”-open palm, one hand coming down on the other, easy enough to translate. Sometimes, when my mother was very tired, her words would fail her and she would sign to me and my sisters instead. ![]()
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