I’ve told you the tale of Father Shogun, which in itself is unique. But it pales quite honestly to the tale of Mama Shogun. No, honestly. As I even begin to try I know I’m leaving out many things that in themselves are standalone chapters. I’m just going to give you some of the highlights. Strap in. Warnings over.

She began life 3/16 of 1953, the oldest daughter of what was to be a large Catholic family in Green Bay. Except she wasn’t the oldest daughter (later…). Loud-mouthed and outspoken to the consternation of her parents, she’s never backed away from anything or anyone she thought was wrong. This included her father, which led to much difficulty in the house to be kind. Let’s just say many things bodily and otherwise were broken in the course of growing up. Nonetheless the lass survived Catholic school and public school, graduated, and figured she’d go on to become a nurse. A true empowered flowerchild of the 60’s. Almost Wonder Years normal. Where’s the Fireworks Factory Shogun?

Here’s a firecracker, just put it down for now.

I’ve never been 100% on all the specifics for a variety of reasons. Even now some family tales stay buried. But there was a party at a campsite or house, my Uncle (the oldest) was the host. There was an argument at the parent’s house earlier that night between mama and her father. She went to the party to blow off steam. She spoke of the argument at the party. The uncle took dad’s side (as did some of the younger sibs), which naturally did not sit well with mama. Eventually she decided to leave the party walking.

Light the wick.

She never saw it coming.

A drunk driver clipped her from behind on whatever road. He got out long enough to ensure she was alive. She remembers that much. Maybe he went on to call for help, who knows. Regardless she was eventually found at the side of the road and rushed to the hospital. Awful, tragic, nothing you would wish upon enemies when faced with it.

That wick still going?

She arrived at the hospital horribly injured. Leg shattered among other internal injuries. She’s with it as much as can be, and being a nursing student knows what’s going on. She falls asleep pretty confident all will be ok. The doctors administered the finest care they knew to do. Including drugs. One, or a combination thereof, that all the side effects hadn’t been fully worked out yet (this is the 70’s). As she has told me, it goes like so.

“Your grandma walks in the room talking, bringing in flowers or something from somebody. I know she’s talking, I see her mouth moving and her eyes on me. I’m thinking I’m still a little fuzzy so I say turn it up. She does, but I’m still not getting anything. Turn it up Mom. This goes on until nurses come running in horrified because your grandma is SCREAMING at me, point blank, and I got nothing. It was gone.”

Boom.

She was deaf. Simple as that. It wasn’t coming back. Woke up, had a day, issues, went to sleep, woke up, deaf.

Everything you’re hearing RIGHT NOW, mute ALL OF IT. All the voices you grew up with, gone. All the sounds of everything around you, gone. All the music! Gone. Now live. Yup, Mama Shogun is about to be born. I told you. Ready? Let’s go…I’M not even here yet.

*mew mew football* shut up. I’m sure I’ll get to some. If you’re here, you should expect better.

So as she recuperates from her injuries, she is now coming to grips with the sudden loss of a sense she has come to know and love. Fortunately hearing aids did offer some help. As it turned out the internal volume didn’t go full mute, but rather on 1 or 2, the equalizer is blown out, and there’s a hundred white-noise machines running. Hearing aids made the volume better, but they also jacked the treble to insane levels. Basically she knew there’s sound and a general idea where it’s coming from. People are now just different tones. Constant headaches were to be the norm when they were on. This was the best tech of the day. Her leg also didn’t “set” exactly right, so for the next 10-15 years her tibia was slowly sliding up along itself. This meant having to add lifts to the soles of her left shoes (think platform boots). Every pair. Then do it all over again in another year or two because things have slid up again. Fun stuff.

To answer a couple of immediate questions that may have cropped up so far 1) I don’t believe the guy was ever caught as it relates to this. And 2) No she never sued the hospital, doctors, or anyone related to the sudden deafness. She was still in nursing school and was determined to see it through. That could slightly impact future job opportunities. That and she viewed it as an honest mistake. Yes it was a source of much consternation and anger from her father and others that she didn’t pursue legal actions. But she didn’t. 3) She can still talk just fine. You wouldn’t know she was deaf right off. This works to her advantage.

It’s not all doom and gloom. She works with the hand she’s been dealt. She finishes nursing school, and starts working. Somewhere in the course of this she decides to see how her new other half lives and gets into Deaf culture. She had been learning ASL and was getting good at lip-reading, but the only way to test sign is to find other deaf people. She discovers the “local” scene, which covers quite a bit of geography, and over time gets more into it. Eventually she meets a certain charming, swarthy deaf guy. Lo and behold, magic. They would eventually become engaged, start a home in scenic Door County, and much to all the parents dismay, married. Mom’s folks thought she was aiming low, dad’s folks (well his mom really) thought she was too uppity, hearing, and would steal their boy’s soul. Something like that. Whatever. They went on their honeymoon in Rhinelander at my dad’s family cabin, and nine months later I was born. See, if the shit hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t be reading this! You’re still here right?

To the relief of most everyone except Dad I was hearing. Dad of course still loves me, it’s just he didn’t see what the big deal was if I was deaf. Two years later Dad got his wish when MidShogun arrived. This was hard on Mama Shogun. FinalShogun (hearing) didn’t arrive for another 3 years. (Three boys was enough, she gave up the dream of having a girl.) Mama had been seeing and dealing with first-hand the perceptions and barriers society put on disabled and deaf people. Like any parent she didn’t want her child to have to deal with that. So she decided he wouldn’t, not if she had anything to say about it. It quickly became clear that Mid’s education would be sub-par if he went to the local, rural schools. It was time to move to Green Bay, which while still not ideal was improved in Mama’s eyes. We moved to the burbs. Dad kept his job in Sturgeon Bay and made the daily commute in a carpool. Turned out GB’s program wasn’t up to snuff, so Mid got shipped off to Dad’s alma mater much to his delight.

Next up, changing the system. The best way to do it would be from the inside she figured, so she went back to school to get her Bachelor’s in Social Work and graduated Summa Cum Loudly (that might be a typo). She finally ended up with the state as Regional Coordinator for the Office of the Deaf/Hard of Hearing, an offshoot of Vocational Rehabilitation. A loud-mouthed, vocal advocate for the Deaf who knew how to play the hearing game. I almost felt bad for those businesses and individuals who found themselves in her crosshairs. Like Gov. Tommy Thompson. He had a bright budget idea (while drunk prolly) where he would make the entire OD/HH department disappear statewide. Heh-heh. Mama arranged protests at every state office and got damn near every Deaf person in the state to show up or write or call (Call. On TTY’s. Which Madison didn’t exactly have a lot of. It’s like picking up a fax line. So they’d call on relay lines with interpreters. It was glorious chaos.). The capper was Mama going directly to the Gov’s office, barge in and kindly inform ‘ol Tommy that if this 90 proof genius came to pass he would have a Federal Class-Action suit among others so massive and so quickly he’d be a forgotten footnote. The idea was dropped. A personal letter of apology came to our house from Tommy telling her he regretted his thinking. Keep in mind she’s a STATE employee. Her Boss of Bosses apologized and ran with his tail tucked. That letter stayed on the fridge for a long time.

Once she was established and settled in at work, she decided enough was enough of the leg trouble. It was time to get it straightened out (shut up). This meant going in, enduring WEEKS of traction, then resetting everything with hardware and the like. Not exactly an outpatient procedure. Mom was inpatient for a couple of months and her parents moved in our house to help dad out. No joy was had by anyone during this time except Grandma who loved having a family to dote on again. She got out eventually, and life more or less returned to normal. Until Mom decided it was time to move on. With a guy from my dad’s carpool. No shit. That all leads to a whole bunch of other stories in the life of this Shogun. Bottom line, the divorce happened, Mom shacked up with the guy, later married him, and everyone still hangs out to this day. That’s not what I’m here about. I’m tying plot threads together here! It’s hard when this was all happening AT THE SAME TIME!

Back to the leg! “But you said that was done.” NOPE. The damn thing kept acting up, the wound wouldn’t heal, something was wrong. Back in she went. Out she came. Back in she went. Out she came. The hardware was being rejected (I brought it to school in a bucket!). What the fuck? Hey ‘member da car accident from way back? Oh I ‘member! Yeah…when they sewed her up all those years ago an infection had crept in the nice comfortable wound and went to sleep. And there it stayed doing nothing. Until they opened her up to fix everything. It woke up with nearly 20 years of an appetite. Flesh looked good, so did bone. No matter how many times they went in and how much they scraped, it wouldn’t give up. We’ve gone from months into a couple years of this. From about 5th-8th grade for me. We moved past local docs and into Mayo Clinic. Nothing is working. A last-ditch Hail Mary (HA! Footbaw! Fuck You.) never-been-done-before procedure, or amputate from the knee down. Mama is done, she can’t take no more after years or rather decades of the fucking thing. Amputation. “But the tibia is ABOVE the knee,” you say. I say yes and shush. See there was basically nothing left of the tibia worth saving, but the lower leg bones and ankle were fine. Ankle joints and hip joints are essentially the same…see where we’re going? Yup they lopped off the bottom, cleaned it up, got rid of the unneeded foot parts and jammed it into the top half of the leg and hip. Makes X-rays and bodyscans hilarious for those who don’t know. The fun part was over, now she just had to relearn how to walk with a prosthetic. (Each one costs more than my first new car.) Which she did. More or less. It’s been nearly 25 (!) years now and she still takes a header every now and again. But hey, the leg wasn’t a problem anymore. Now about that pesky being deaf thing…

Mama desperately missed her hearing, the music most of all. She loved that her two sons took up the drums, which she could at least feel and with the aids make out clearly in say a concert or parade setting. She loved our music in the car with the bass. (We didn’t talk about the lyrics mostly. She trusted us. Example: She got me Appetite for Destruction as a Valentine’s Day gift assuming it was what kids were listening to.) But she wanted more. She waited until MidShogun had graduated and was on his own as she didn’t want to betray him. Then she decided it was time to try Cochlear implants. She broke the news to MidShogun like a kid coming out to their folks. MidShogun, like any good parent would said “I always knew you would Mom. It’s what you are. It’s fine, do it.” So she did. One ear first to see if it would take and to adjust (they do have to open your skull for this). I was there the day they turned it on. I, I got nothing. My mother could hear, just like all the other moms. OH SHIT MY MOTHER CAN HEAR! It wasn’t like automatic magic, again language had to be relearned. It steadily got good enough that the next one was a go. Now suddenly she was picking up her husband’s and children’s filthy language WHEN SHE WASN’T LOOKING. I never had this. Kinda big deal. She starting buying CD’s en masse. New cars had to have good stereos (she got that from me). Meeting me out for dinner one time in Milwaukee, I heard my mother’s car from a block away. Knowing the area she had to drive through I can only imagine the double-takes. Besides the music and hearing the voices of loved ones, besides that you know what her favorite part of it is? She can take the receivers off (Magnets! In her head! How do they work?) and boom, all is gone and all is quiet. Implants are all or nothing. All the regular volume or mute. Funny innit? Wanted so bad to have it back, happiest when she gets to stop it. Maybe because this time it’s her choice.

There you go. Mama Shogun. The quick highlight reel of the deaf blonde one-legged bionic woman. I could write and tell ridiculously true tales of our lives for ages. Retired from the frontlines of doing good, but still raising hell as a private contractor. Much happier these days being a grandmother and watching over all her boys, whether they be biological, married to, or once married to. She is quite simply a force of nature. When I say in the title that you WILL bow, I mean it. You have no choice. And she’s mine.