Katherine Mount was a professional singer and actress. She performed regularly and acted in both theatre and on television, including Eastenders. You may have seen her.
Music was everything to Katherine. She was born with a talent for singing, a talent that was encouraged by her mother who would regularly sing to her as a child. For Katherine, it was a given that she would pass on her love of music to her children. But, eleven years ago – a few weeks after the birth of her son, Ethan – everything changed.
Katherine recalls the audiologist at her local hospital telling her that Ethan was profoundly deaf as if it happened today. “First we went to Warwick Hospital but there were some odd readings and they thought that Ethan was hearing, but we knew that wasn’t right.” Katherine told me.
“We noticed that Ethan wasn’t reacting to our big dog that sometimes barked very close to him. My husband had issues when he was a kid with glue ear so he was looking out for hearing problems, but the hospital reckoned that they had issues with their equipment, so they invited us back for another appointment a few weeks later. That time, thinking that maybe everything was fine, I went along, alone.”
“When they told me Ethan was deaf, I didn’t have a clue what to do with myself. Bless the staff there too, they didn’t know what to do either. I was crying immediately and began asking really stupid questions. They said he’d he would have to wear hearing aids and I asked how long he’d have to wear them for, thinking that deafness might be something that could be fixed. The truth is that they had nothing to give me, no information to cling on to, they just sent me home. Then it was just me and Ethan in the car park and I have never made sounds like it. I was roaring a real guttural roar. I was grieving.”
The news of her son’s deafness came as a massive blow; the world as she knew it changed in that moment. Katherine is the type of person who wants to solve problems quickly but she could do nothing but wait for the next appointment letter. When Ethan was four months old, he was referred to a cochlear implant centre, where he was initially found not to be a suitable candidate for a cochlear implant. Later, the doctors decided that he could be fitted with an implant in one of his ears, but there were doubts over its potential effectiveness, so by the time the implant was fitted, Katherine had given up on the idea of Ethan enjoying music.
“We just stopped music altogether. No singing in the house, I didn’t sing to him either. I was voiceless,” Katherine says. “We didn’t play music in the house as we had to keep background noise down to help Ethan hear speech clearly.”
Katherine, burdened with guilt, continued to sing herself but one day, this hit her. “I was devastated in many different ways after Ethan’s diagnosis but singing for me was a huge, huge thing. I was singing a hymn called ‘Thine be the Glory’ in a church choir and I just had to sit down in the middle of it. I couldn’t sing it any longer because of the emotions. I just thought ‘Oh my God, Ethan will never, ever, hear this song. I just sat down. I knew I couldn’t do this anymore.”
Two-years later, Katherine and her husband split up. Katherine and Ethan, now three, moved to London – where a new friendship sparked a series of events that would change the course of their lives.
“I met a dear friend called Donna, who had a deaf child too and was still singing.” Katherine recalls. “She was not affected in the same way that I was and that fascinated me. Donna persuaded me to come along to a choir, and soon after I also realised that Ethan was enjoying music too and he wanted to have a boogie with me at home. He could hear music through his implant and he seemed to rather like it! Slowly but surely, the music came back into our lives.”
Then at the age of six, Ethan joined the Kaos signing choir, which is made up of deaf and hearing children, and went on to perform with Kaos at the Olympic opening ceremony. “The Kaos Choir was amazing for him,” Katherine says. “When he learned the songs in sign he wanted to perform all the time. He would perform to anyone! It was like the music came alive in him.”
“At the time, Ethan’s spoken language was delayed so we weren’t really having conversations but it was like he used signed songs as his language. He wanted to do it all the time and he would say ‘watch me, watch me’. He had my performance gene big time – he multiplied it.”
Re-energised by both verbal and signed song, Katherine took up singing training once again to work on her voice. “I remember the first time I was singing on my own it opened the floodgates. I couldn’t stop crying. I found my own music again. I was doing concerts and musical theatre again and a few pieces at the London fringe. I was much more musical at home and Ethan was coming to performances.”
It felt strange, Katherine admits, to be singing to her son because he might not hear her, but when Ethan watched his mother perform, he was always transfixed, even – on one occasion – when his implant battery went flat so he couldn’t hear a thing. “But that didn’t matter. He didn’t move a muscle. He was mesmerised.” Another time, he got up and performed with her – he wanted to be at her side as she did the job she loved. It seemed that both Ethan and Katherine were now determined to overcome the barrier that Katherine initially believed stood between them.
On the night Ethan’s battery went flat, Helen, a member of the singing trio Katherine was performing with, wrote a song about Ethan watching his mother sing. She recorded it and shared it with Katherine the next day by email. It was called Ethan’s Song.
“When I listened to Ethan’s song for the first time, I couldn’t stop crying.” Katherine says. “It was expressing an emotion that I just didn’t want to visit before. I actually thought I couldn’t sing it. I tried and tried but couldn’t get to the end without bawling. We
eventually put the song into a show were doing on the Kings Road in London. I just decided to go for it, and I have to say that it was the most extraordinary performance experience I have ever had.”
Towards the end of that first performance of Ethan’s song, Katherine’s hands rose up. She was signing along with the words. He wasn’t there but she was talking to Ethan, singing to him and in doing so, blending the two forms of expression that now co-existed in the family home. The audience realised immediately what the song was about.
“The penny dropped for the audience and you could feel it in the room. My friend Donna was there to see it too.” Katherine explains. “It was really important to me that she saw it, felt it and loved it. And she did. It was her seal of approval as a fellow parent of a deaf child that spurred me on. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”
After that watershed moment, Katherine decided to share Ethan’s song on YouTube to help other parents who are going through the same experience. Ethan went on to feature in his own documentary on CBBC called ‘I am Ethan,’ and has also appeared in videos for the NDCS and on ITV Signed Stories.
From a time when it seemed like it would be impossible for music to be a part of their lives in the same way as it had been for Katherine and her mother, she and Ethan had made a connection through songs, both signed and sung.
Watch Katherine perform the signed version.
Andy volunteers for the Peterborough and District Deaf Children’s Society on their website, deaf football coaching and other events as well as working for a hearing loss charity. Contact him on twitter @LC_AndyP (all views expressed are his own).
The Limping Chicken’s supporters provide: BSL translation, multimedia solutions, television production and BSL training (Remark! ), sign language interpreting and communications support (Deaf Umbrella), online BSL video interpreting (SignVideo), theatre captioning (STAGETEXT), legal advice for Deaf people (RAD Deaf Law Centre), Remote Captioning (Bee Communications), visual theatre with BSL (Krazy Kat) , healthcare support for Deaf people (SignHealth), specialist lipspeaking support (Lipspeaker UK), sign language and Red Dot online video interpreting (Action Deafness Communications).
Lana
April 3, 2013
If I have a mother like her showing me how much I miss the joy of not hearing the music, I am sure that i would be depressed – lucky I am born to Deaf family and I grew up liking the nice music vibration from my body
Liz Ward
April 3, 2013
It’s difficult to get that balance right, when it comes to music. Its such a subject fraught with emotion – hearing people don’t always understand that deaf people can enjoy music too, whether or not we hear it or feel it in the same way. My parents love music, especially my Dad – but he gave me the gift of music at a young age, and I’ll always remember that, simply because my parents understood that being deaf doesn’t lock you out of appreciating music. It can take a long time for some hearing parents to understand that. I’m glad that Ethan and his Mum can share their love of music with each other.
Editor
April 3, 2013
Thanks for the comment – Andy
Karen Putz (@DeafMom)
April 3, 2013
Love this!
Editor
April 3, 2013
Thank you!
Andy
Sarah
April 3, 2013
This is so lovely to read; I’ve known both Ethan and Katherine for years, through our local NDCS society, and through ChickenShed theatre, and yet I never knew about this, so it’s so good to read. I am sure that Ethan is now growing into a wonderful young man, and I hope that his love of music (and this lovely connection between them) continues to grow. As a deaf person myself, music helped me so much when I was a teenager; first the music itself, and then after I heard the song, I would search for the lyrics, sometimes hearing friends even wrote the lyrics out for me…and it is so, so true that it can connect people so deeply. Also, I’m Lizzie’s younger sister (comment above), so have also had the influence of my hearing family’s love for music…but also, I found that I was sharing a love of music with both my deaf and hearing friends as a teenager…and that has continued today, into my 20s. Music, heard in any way, is a great thing. Thank you for publishing this blog post, it really was so lovely to read!
Editor
April 3, 2013
You’re welcome – thanks for the thoughtful comment
Andy
16jh
April 3, 2013
This is such an inspiring story. I’d really like to work in the field of deaf performing arts when I graduate and it’s stories like this that show you just how much support and interest there is out there for the involvement of deaf communities in performing arts.
Editor
April 4, 2013
Good luck with your plans and let me know if I can help out
Andy
16jh
April 4, 2013
I wonder if you can actually? Do you have any point of contact as I would be interested to hear any advice you have on the topic of finding a way into this line of work?
Sarah Ward
April 8, 2013
There are quite a few people/companies you could contact for this; there are a few well known companies, such as Graeae (http://www.graeae.org/), or Deafinitely (http://www.deafinitelytheatre.co.uk/), and there are also smaller companies that are on their way up and always on the lookout for new people to work with (workshop leaders/facilitators, performers etc), one that I know well and have worked with are Handprint Theatre – they were formed by graduates from the Theatre Arts, Education and Deaf Studies course, because they wanted to carry on the work that they did on the course! A simple google search (for all of the above) will give you further details, and contact details 🙂
C
April 4, 2013
Beautifully written Andy…lovely story.
C x
Editor
April 4, 2013
Thanks C – very kind of you to say so 🙂
Andy
Rachel
April 4, 2013
My son (7) and I (both Deaf) saw Ethan’s programme on CBBC,( it was pure luck it wason whenwe saw it!) – we enjoyed it. Ethan seems to be a confidence young man, I am sure we’ll see more of him in the future! Good luck to him.
Linda Petrons
June 6, 2013
I work for SignHealth, the healthcare charity for deaf children and adults – our flagship event is sign2sing see http://www.sign2sing.org.uk . It’s an amazing all inclusive event. We’re planning for sign2sing 2014 – please get in touch if you would like more information.