Click

Around five years ago, the community theater in my hometown presented The Miracle Worker, which tells the story of Helen Keller’s childhood. I don’t remember all that much about the play, but its climactic moment is engrained in my mind and heart. 

It’s the moment for which Helen’s teacher has anxiously waited, towards which she has tirelessly worked; the moment when Helen understands that water -- the reality that she tastes, feels, knows -- is being rendered into her teacher’s hands; the moment when Helen finally realizes that her own hands have the power to translate realities into symbols. 

We just can’t comprehend the magnitude of this realization, of the moment when communication finally clicks. It’s an inscrutable revelation that enables everyday magic. 

Hazem’s revelatory moment has not yet arrived. 

This is one of several dozen Velcro cards that can be placed into Hazem’s daily schedule. Each card has an accompanying sign, most of which he can perform from memory. 

Everyday, at 3:30 PM, Hazem runs his fingers over this card, then independently performs the sign for “drink” (a thumb’s-up tapping his lips several times). Afterwards, without any further prompt, he walks to his seat at the table and sits down, expecting to be served a snack. 

Sounds great, right? But it’s not the whole story. 

Although it appears that Hazem has successfully associated the card/sign for “drink” with having a snack, I do not think that such associations yet exist for many of his cards/signs. After feeling, for example, his pottery card, Hazem usually performs the correct sign for “pottery,” but then he might just stand still or walk in the wrong direction, because he doesn’t necessarily understand that the card/sign means he’s about to play with clay. So, even when there is a mental connection between cards in his schedule and their corresponding signs, there may or may not be a mental connection between the signs and the realities that they signify -- which is, of course, the more important connection.

And here’s where it gets scary: apart from using his schedule, and apart from being prompted by someone else, I have never seen Hazem perform an actual sign. 

He gets thirsty, but he never signs “drink.” 

His diaper fills up, and he feels uncomfortable, but he never signs “bathroom.”

He has a favorite music-playing toy, but one day last week he couldn’t use it, because another deafblind child already was, and Hazem never signed “music” or “don’t want” or “finished” but just fidgeted then cried then emotionally erupted like he did when he was sick and my legs started shaking from anxiety and dread. 

That time, thank God, it ended in less than ten minutes. 

All this goes to say: we’re still waiting for the click. Hazem copies, Hazem memorizes. But Hazem does not communicate. 

This is probably related to his utter dependency. For most of Hazem’s life, everything has been done for him -- and if it hasn’t been done for him, he has been told what to do.

It makes me wonder if he is more or less incapable of independent choice at this point in his life. 

A fellow volunteer in the deafblind unit recently said, “Hazem very well might die from hunger with a full plate of food in front of him if no one ever tapped his arm, telling him to take the next bite.” 

Is an individual’s self-recognition (and perhaps self-assertion) the foundational impetus for communication? Are we still waiting for the click because Hazem doesn’t truly apprehend his individuality, because he doesn’t conceive of his self as independent of the people around him? 

These questions, these predicaments are shrouded in mystery. Hazem’s communicative, emotional, psychological darknesses are largely impenetrable. 

God alone comprehends.