Note: back in October 2021, I challenged myself to use the Inktober prompts to create one black-and-white piece of art each day. I would then learn how to vectorize them in Adobe Illustrator and make some cool digital art. Two things happened in the meantime: 1) Illustrator’s learning curve proved steeper than I could find time or focus for, and 2) I started writing pieces alongside them as a writing exercise. INKTHINK is a series combining the two for the next 31 days.
I have rarely met a knot that didn’t make me anxious. I could appreciate them – the way they’d tie a boat securely to the dock, the way they’d hold a tent up in high winds, the way they’d represent a promise of something difficult to unravel – but I had no idea how to make them. And the thing about learning how to do a knot is you have to watch it being done while being told how to do it at the same time. Any Deaf person knows this is a fool’s errand. Something will get lost in translation. You will think it can’t be much different than tying your own shoes and yet every single time you make a knot, you feel the give. It’s not something to be trusted.
But there is a knot I can entertain: the Triquetra – otherwise known as the Trinity Knot. It’s a Celtic Irish symbol I’ve been drawn to before I ever had an inkling of family heritage tying back (see what I did there?) to the culture. Drawing this knot is difficult for the very reason that makes it so captivating: there is no beginning or end. There are only eternal curves. In other words: it’s Life as we’ll come to accept it.
There’s also a Celtic conviction – at least according to a questionable Google search – that things of significance in this world come in threes. I think of triangles and how I’ve been told my whole life they’re the strongest structure to build with – a fact that did not keep the balsa wood bridge I built in my high school architecture class from collapsing under an embarrassing low amount of pressure. I think about how the best passing in soccer often occurs when players form an ever-shifting triangle wherever they are on the field, always allowing the teammate with the ball at least two quick options to go to. I think about my wife and our newly-2-year-old daughter and the unmistakable power of the firstborn. You start with two people. And then you make a third. And everything with that child is a series of firsts, the bond burnished through the experiences you survive and build upon.
Recently, in the third and final test for my bilingual certification, I did an ASL (American Sign Language) interview. The process is deceptively simple: you chat with an interviewer over 5 questions and 20 minutes, using as much ASL grammar and structure as you comfortably can. But the hardest part of the test is everything before and after. Very few Deaf people sign in strict ASL; we’re the accumulation of all our experiences and exposures to language, especially English (or any other dominant speaking language). Our individual language style is one of survival, a way to say, “I got to this point in my life by signing just like this.” And yet the results are scored by someone not in the room, someone who reviews this recorded interview video that flattens your 3D conversation. You can’t help but feel like the score – one way or another – is some indictment of your own Deaf identity.
I say this because as I was practicing for the test, thinking through signs I’d seen hundreds of times but didn’t quite feel comfortable with on my own, I ran into one unexpected roadblock: lists. When you’re describing a list of things in ASL – in the air, not through spoken words – you will use your non-dominant hand to keep track of them. To me, the easiest number to work with is 3. It feels sturdy and true. Like the triangles that build everything powerful and imposing around you. When you extend the list to four, the natural instinct is to raise the ring finger, which is awkward as hell. It doesn’t feel right. Unless you’re really flexible, that ring finger will be barely rising, like a deflating tube balloon, a shy digit eager to duck out of the exercise altogether. What you’re supposed to do is fold in the thumb and raise four fingers. But now your brain has to shuffle the list one finger over. And then if you decide to extend the list to 5, you reshuffle a finger over in the opposite direction, with your thumb becoming the top of the list.
At some point, it feels like 3 is where you should stop.
(Sidebar: this led me, a childhood Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles megafan to wonder: just how would these four dudes say “I love you” in ASL? Just hold their hands up, all fingers extended? Squeeze two green balls between their two fingers? Would it mean that “hello” and “I love you” and “goodbye” are all the same sentiment and this is why they have commitment issues?)
Coming back to the Celtic conviction of threes: it can represent many things: birth, life, and death; earth, sea, and sky; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But there’s one particular triad that’s slapped me around in adulthood and parenthood alike: the past, present, and future.
As a parent, there is no way to unhook the curves in the Trinity Knot of your life. Every decision you make about your child runs through all three time loops all at once. When you wonder just how many salty snacks is enough before Nabisco signs them to an endorsement deal. When you fret whether to rock them or let them cry it out. When you try to determine how much money to set in a college fund when you can’t even imagine what college will look like in this crazy world 16 years down the line. In each decision you will consider your past as a child, and as an adult you will consider the impact in the present moment. You will wonder, far more than you want to admit, if you’ve irreparably screwed up your child. All these three timelines will bleed into each other like someone placing a tissue paper collage over your brain, one overlapping layer at a time.
As an adult, you’re going to constantly be fidgeting with your identity in every idle and chaotic moment. You’re going to be rewriting your past, reframing every embarrassing high school moment (God, they were many) and decision you swerved away from making, trying to rewire everything so the person you are today makes a little bit more sense. And then you’re gonna look ahead, into the great unknown, and wonder just what is yet to come. This is all normal. This is all what makes life wonderful and difficult and interesting and unique. I love my animals, but I do not believe they have these trinity loops running through their heads. Perhaps that’s why you don’t see substance addiction and therapy in the Animal Kingdom.
One day I will learn these handy knots. I’ll secure a few boats and assure the structure of some tents (especially so my family doesn’t assume I’m as clueless as I sometimes look). Perhaps I’ll even help my daughters build an especially invulnerable balsa wood bridge, vicariously living through their project, shaking my fist at the architecture gods and their impossible standards. But until then, I’ll be okay with stopping at 3. Three is more than enough. Three eternal loops is a life worth examining. And a life examined is one worth living.
