A Deaf Woman Was About to Leave the Christmas Blind Date — Then Two Twin Girls Signed: ‘Please Don’t
The Truth in the Foyer
The Christmas Eve blind date was, in its origins, an act of love from a person who loves me.
He had decided, after 3 years of watching me not date, that the watching required action. My brother Michael is two years younger than me.,
In the years since Sarah died, he has been one of the most consistent and most present people in my life and in my daughters’ lives.
He had called me in early December and told me he had met someone he wanted me to meet. Her name was Elena.
She was 36 years old. She was a graphic designer who worked for a firm in Nashville.
Michael said she was smart and funny and warm. She had been through her own difficult chapter.
A long-term relationship had ended two years earlier. She was, like me, cautious about the idea of dating.
She was also, like me, aware that the caution was starting to calcify into something more permanent than intended.
Michael had met her through a mutual friend. He arranged with brotherly confidence that I was not going to refuse a Christmas Eve dinner.
It was Christmas Eve and I would not be alone. A reservation for two at the Evergreen was set for 6:30 on December 24th.
I said yes. I did not say it enthusiastically or with the ease of someone who is ready.
I said it with the resigned and cautious yes of a man who knows that his brother is not wrong.
The alternative was sitting at home on Christmas Eve thinking about Sarah. I would feel the specific weight of the third Christmas without her in a way that helps no one.
It certainly wouldn’t help the two seven-year-olds who were looking at me with the attentiveness they always brought to how I was doing.
I arranged for my friend Karen to sit with the girls in the restaurant foyer during the first part of the evening. They had insisted on coming for the beginning of it.
It was Christmas Eve and the Evergreen had lights and a tree in the lobby. They wanted to see it.
I had agreed because saying no to that on Christmas Eve felt like the wrong kind of no. The plan was that Karen would take them home after 30 minutes.
Elena and I would have dinner. That was the plan.
Elena was supposed to arrive at 6:30. At 6:33 I was at the table.
At 6:45 I had checked my phone 12 times and received no messages. At 6:50 I had received a text from Lily that said, “Don’t move we fixed it.”,
I had no idea what any of that meant. What I did not know, sitting at the table with the good shirt and the unanswered messages, was what had happened in the foyer.
In the 23 minutes I had been inside, Elena had arrived at the restaurant at 6:27. She was 3 minutes early.
She had stood in the foyer for several minutes working herself toward the entrance. She had the specific hesitation of someone who has agreed to something and is in the process of reconsidering it.
She was in the actual physical location of the thing. She had been stood up on two previous dates in the past year.
She had come out tonight with the specific courage of someone who has been hurt and is trying not to let the hurt make the decisions.
She was standing in the foyer of the Evergreen on Christmas Eve with the internal debate of whether to go in. It was running at full volume in her head.
She was losing the debate in the direction of leaving when two seven-year-olds in matching Christmas dresses appeared in front of her. Grace saw her first.,
Grace always sees the important things first. She had been watching the foyer with the attentiveness of someone who takes their job of observation seriously.
She had seen Elena come in and stop. She saw her do the specific standing still of someone who is not staying but has not yet left.
She had read the situation with the perceptiveness that is simply who she is. She said something to Lily.
I do not know exactly what she said because I was not there. Based on the result, I think it was something like, “That’s her and she’s going to leave.”
Lily, who does not do the circumnavigation, did the direct thing. She walked up to Elena, she raised her hands, and she signed.
Now here is the thing about this that matters: Elena is deaf. She has been deaf since birth.
Michael knew this and had told me. I had mentioned it to the girls in the general briefing about the evening.
I always tell them the relevant things. They had nodded with the easy acknowledgement of children for whom this information requires no particular adjustment.
It has simply never been unusual in their world. Elena was standing in the foyer of a restaurant on Christmas Eve preparing to leave.
A 7-year-old in a Christmas dress walked up to her and raised her hands. She signed to her in clear and fluent ASL words.
Elena has since told me these words. Grace told me the signs later.
They had signed: “Please don’t go our daddy is inside. He ironed his shirt for tonight.”
“He doesn’t know we can see how lonely he is, but we can. He needs someone. Will you please stay?”
Elena stood in the foyer of the Evergreen and read those signs from a seven-year-old child who should not have been able to sign to her at all.
Something happened on her face that Karen described to me later. Karen was standing 6 feet away and watching the whole thing.,
She had the specific expression of a person witnessing something that is simultaneously not their business and absolutely their business.
She described Elena as the most completely undone she had ever seen a person become while still standing upright. Elena’s hands came up to her mouth.
Her eyes filled. She looked at both girls for a long moment, then she looked at the door to the restaurant.
Then she signed back to two seven-year-olds on Christmas Eve. “He ironed his shirt,” Lily signed.
“And he checked his hair six times in the mirror.” Elena laughed.
It was the real kind of laugh—the kind that arrives before you have decided to laugh.
Grace signed with the simplicity that is the most powerful kind of truth. “He misses our mom but he’s trying. He just needs someone to walk in.”
Elena looked at them for one more moment. She took a breath and she walked in.
