Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

So my parents really want me to watch ABC's Extreme Makeover tonight, Oct. 31. We'll be at church this evening so if we're not home in time to catch the whole show, I'm going to watch it online sometime. I don't have DVR or anything fancy like that, haha. My parents went to Oregon last month for my dad's school's 140th anniversary. They arrived at the school on a Friday and found out that the prior Monday, just five days before, the Makeover crew had left. How cool is that?

My dad went to the Oregon School for the Deaf from the time he was 4 years old until he graduated high school, just shy of his 20th birthday. For sixteen years he pretty much lived at this school. This is no exaggeration either. He started school at 4 and his parents would drop him off and not come back until the weekend, four weeks later.

My grandparents lived too far away to pick up my dad each and every weekend. It was Oregon, so there were lots of winding roads through the mountains and the trip took four hours each way. So they came once a month. (I confirmed this with my dad and he said it could have been every 2 months. I really hope his memory is bad because that is just heart-wrenching.) As roads were improved and interstates built, the trip gradually become shorter, and as he got older, he would go home every 3 weeks, then every 2. Eventually the four hour trip took only two hours.

My dad at 4 years old had no idea why his parents took him to this place and left him. He'd cry and cry every time. I just cannot imagine that. My little Nathan is 4. I cannot fathom leaving him anywhere and not seeing him for a month. My heart aches at the thought of my dad living this way.

He'd go home at Christmas break and other long holidays and vacations, and also for the summer. But that was it. School became his home. He had friends there and people he could communicate with. Life was difficult at home. His parents didn't speak English. They were immigrants from Finland, having moved to America when my dad was 18 months old. His family spoke Finnish at home and he had no clue what they were saying. When he learned how to read in school it did no good at home. All of the newspapers and magazines were in Finnish. His parents eventually learned a little bit of English but it wasn't until he was older. He was isolated and alone. No one in his family learned sign language.

My mom has a similar story. She grew up in a large family, and she was the only one who was deaf. Her parents at least spoke English and she was taught to read lips. The problem is, reading lips is not an effective way to communicate. So many words look the same when you are talking. She has a memory of being taken to a cemetery and a grave was pointed out to her. She thought her parents were saying it was her teacher. She had no idea what teacher had died. Come to find out, years later, she learned they were saying it was her sister, a sister who had died before my mother was born. Look in a mirror and mouth the words teacher and sister. They look just about the same especially when you're talking normally and not trying to exaggerate your lips.

My dad lived in Oregon from the time he moved there from Finland at 18 months old until he went away to college in Washington, D.C. Oregon is home to him. He always tells us he wants to be buried there. When we'd go there to visit our grandparents, a big part of our trip would include seeing his old friends from school who still lived in the area. We'd even go back to the Oregon School for the Deaf and visit the campus and watch a high school basketball game.

My dad has a lot of school pride. In August he had his 40th class reunion and so he flew to Oregon to attend. A few weeks later was the school's 140th anniversary so he and my mother went back. He told me he ordered a book while he was there on the history of the school. He just got it a few days ago, a 530 page hardbound book with a few photos of himself in it.

The Makeover crew was there to build a new boys' dormitory. Apparently in the basement of the dorm the school puts on a huge Halloween haunted house. They've been doing it to raise funds for the school for years and it draws large crowds from the community. The basement needed a lot of work so the show came to give them a new building.

Thankfully a lot has changed since the 1950's when my parents went to school. There are more choices for deaf students; they can go to a state school with a residential program and buses to take you home on weekends, or choose to go to a regular public school with services for the deaf and interpreters in the classroom. Parents of deaf children are encouraged to learn sign language. There are high tech hearing aids. You can have the choice to learn to speak or sign or both.

Extreme Makeover makes me cry every time I catch an episode. But this one will surely be a sob fest for me with my connection to it.

I'm getting the tissues out.