Each Other's Voices

Once upon a time there lived a boy and his sister. They loved each other very much. As children, they were almost always seen together. The boy’s name was Nathan. He was very friendly and loved to talk to everyone he met. If he saw someone he knew he would walk (sometimes run) across any size room to greet and connect with that person. 

Nathan’s sister, Beth, was quite the opposite of him in social settings. She would spot someone she knew, take note of her presence, and only greet her if it was unavoidable. Beth was very friendly in her own way but was often too uncomfortable to show it. She would tell herself that the person was too busy to talk to her. She didn’t want to bother anyone.

Nathan, on the other hand, had no hesitation or inhibition when it came to greeting people he knew or had been introduced to even once. He wanted to talk to them, wanted to have a connection, wanted to tell them (embarrassing) stories about how his favorite gospel quartet was coming to town and how he could hardly wait to see them. He wanted to say and share all these things. He didn’t feel like they wouldn’t want to hear about singing bass or about his latest medical procedure or about his newest CD. He didn’t second guess himself. He would just greet and share and enjoy the inevitable positive feedback that he would get from doing so. 

The only problem was that Nathan didn’t have a voice. At least not one that most people could hear and understand. He made sounds but his words were not clear. He said fragments of words, made some other incoherent sounds, used gestures and facial expressions, and avoided eye contact yet expected to be understood. 

Most people would acknowledge his friendliness with awkward yet genuine joy but have very little idea what he was actually saying, besides the obvious greeting. They’d smile, high five, laugh, nod, smile some more, and maybe even try, to the best of their ability, to guess what he was saying,. But how can people be expected to hear “my group” and “excited” and see lots of hand gestures, jumping in place, a lightening quick point to his shirt and understand that his favorite gospel quartet Acappella was coming to Visalia on the 20th for a concert and he wanted to get their autographs? 

But if Beth was there, she would translate. She would fill in the words that he left out. She would hear those fragmented sentences and tell the stories for him. She would plug those words into a massive database and do a keyword search. She knew his history. She was one of the only people that could see all his cues, interpret them, and really hear all that he was saying. He relied on her to be his interpreter and she relied on him to help her reach out beyond herself to connect with the community around them.

They were each other’s voices.