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Show none of them for us, it was always safest to play the dumb puppet act before trusting anyone. So, we had begun again. She had perhaps twenty signs by that particular day. "Run," was not among them. The message had finally been received, and I as student, caught my own breath just for a moment. No one had "won" that day, we had just "communicated." And so we ran, and Patty learned the sign for 'run, and all of that day she formed the sign to herself and laughed softly. She liked running, and for the next two days she would do the sign over and over again, whenever she thought she was alone in the room*, I had become sole heir to an entire history of one life^and catching the rampant energies did not lessen my nightmares in the months to come. That night I wrote in my diary a strange passage that I still, and may never, fully realize; "October 12: Teach a child according to his own life space, his own way of releasing energy. How true of all children and how many fences we build, how many walls to hide any leaks or reserves or possible ruptures. The more advanced the energy, the lesser becomes the handicap; the more walls there are to cover our will. Such tight casings we weave, to bind in energies that might by accident flow into another's hands." It was time for lesson two. Patty has become affectionate. I am learning her gestures for objects that she does not know the signs for- She is learning the formal signs rapidly. Her signing list grows daily and is retained almost at once. She identifies different people by their thumbnails or a ring or earring. I give her their name signs. She explores faces and I tell her body parts. She grabs my hands over hers to put big gestures in them or places the smaller signs on top of my palm. I place my hands over hers when she wishes to say something to me. She does not know for sure whether I am blind or not, but she does know that I have eyes shaped differently from hers. She laughs when she discovers a mole on the face of a stranger and feels the same small lump in a crack by her own nose. She sits on laps. She gives hugs and pulls people down -8- |