my hands pick themselves up...

Sometimes I think that before I leave Gallaudet I am bound to use the wrong language at the wrong time. I had a dream the other night where I walked out of my room and started talking to someone instead of signing... much to my embarassment. But it has never happened, not even once. Somehow, in this world of language switching in which I live, my brain has it figured out. This is not to say that I necessarily think in ASL when it is appropriate. The English is quite often still in there, and more often than I would like to admit it comes out in my signing. But I have never once gotten the mode wrong, or even felt myself almost doing so. When I am on campus, outside of my room, I am signing- no exceptions. Whether my signing is always ASL is another matter entirely. But, while there may be English in my mind, there are no words in my mouth.

You might think (or... *I* might think) that after almost a full week away from Gallaudet for Thanksgiving, without signing at all, it would be hard to come back and switch languages, and modes. And admittedly, I sat in my first class at 8:00am on Monday trying to open my eyes wider. My eyes were both tired, and happily stimulated. Over stimulated? No... but opening wider so as to adjust my brain as rapdily as possible. It is as though I had to open my eyes wider because pulling my eye lids up would tug my brain out of sleepiness and English and back to the visual language I love so much. As hands were flying I was consciously aware for the first time in awhile that I was immersed in my second language. I could feel myself thinking in English... and thought for a brief moment about my dream. (I was consciously aware of thinking in English, and the need to change modes, but also still thinking about the warm bed I had forced myself out of. Thus... the dream came to mind). And then suddenly I was snapped back to reality, and realized I had something to say.

So I raised my hand. And the language flowed out of my hands as though I had never left... as though it had never left... as though it had never stopped. My hands just know. It's in me. While there are still things I don't know how to fully express in this second language, there are other times, after five years, when my hands are able to express what my mouth cannot. And in the inbetween moments, I live in an almost bilingual world where my mind knows which language to use at which times, and figures out how to express itself appropriately.