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became like a second set of parents to me. We were so close that the two sets of parents were comfortable disciplining each other’s children.
    When we lived in Houston we saw them all the time. My parents and the Sloans were heavily into smoking weed, and never hid their marijuana use from us kids. I never thought anything of it. I assumed it was something adults enjoyed that kids didn’t, like antiquing. The four spent hours getting stoned, playing cards or dominoes, and talking and laughing into the wee hours of the night. They rolled joints with a mechanical cigarette roller or smoked from a fancy bong that my father handcrafted using a glass tube and pewter. The year 1971 was engraved into the base.
    We kids entertained ourselves with games that Lisa and Skip had learned at Deaf school. We’d dream up goofy characters and comedy skits and have fun acting them out. When our parents weren’t around, my brother and I practiced making “joints” with rolling papers and loose tobacco collected from my father’s cigarette butts and argued over which of us would inherit their bong when they died. My claim was that since it had my birth year carved in it, I was the rightful heir. David’s rebuttal was that he had actually used it. I had heard he first smoked pot at eight years old. Whether it was true or not, this retort was enough for me to presume it would be his someday.
    Since moving to Montgomery, our visits with the Sloans were sporadic and we relished the beach outings. Mom made deviled eggs, potato salad, and dip from Lipton’s onion soup mix and atub of sour cream. She packed plenty of soda for the children and cans of Coors Light for Dad, who could never be found without one, even as he drove.
    The Chevy would barely have come to a stop when we’d make a break for the water. I’d spend the entire day frolicking in the brown waters of the Gulf while our moms chatted and our dads drank beer under a beach umbrella.
    I’d swim out as far as I could, where the waves were biggest and the bottom too deep to touch. I’d count the number of somersaults I could do in a row, while hearing faint muffled laughter and chatter above the waterline. I’d wonder, “Is this what being deaf sounds like?”
    In fact, any time I found myself submerged in water, in a bathtub, a swimming pool, or the ocean, I would take the opportunity to test out how it might feel to never hear again. But I was never sure if I achieved the desired effect. I could not know what it was like for Mom and Dad.
    Sometimes, the currents would pull me down the beach some three hundred yards. It was terrifying to emerge from the surf to realize no one was watching after me. Sure, there was a lifeguard on duty, but what worried me was finding my family. Not an unnatural fear for any child but heightened because of my parents’ inability to hear me calling out to them. Besides being deaf, they were usually engaged in adult conversation and having their own fun. I often wondered how long it would be before they even noticed I was missing. After one lengthy, terrifying search for a colorful beach umbrella that had been planted by a neighboring party but had since been packed away, I realized I needed to scope out a more permanent landmark like a buoy or jetty to mark my family’s location.
    Heading home from one beach outing, David and I and the two Sloan kids hunkered down low in the back of the Chevy. We zipped along the highway, and the wind whipped my long blond locks, stinging my salty burned skin. I was daydreaming and playing with a jagged edge of a rotten wood slat in the truck bed with my foot when one of my Flintstones flip-flops vanished through a hole. Seeing it tumble out of sight shocked me into a burst of tears.
    Lisa banged on the glass and signed to my father, “Kambri lost shoe!” Dad took one look at me crying and brought the Chevy to a screeching halt. I was surprised when he shifted into reverse and drove backward until we saw my