There's something so moving about stories concerning a strong intergenerational bond – in the case of slender novel “What Willow Says” it's between a grandmother and her deaf granddaughter who spend time in nature developing their own unique form of communication. It's composed of 29 journal entries which follow their excursions in parks and forests as well as their encounters with schools, hearing specialists and the deaf community. In doing so we come to understand their beautiful relationship and get an insight into a language formed for just two people. Subtle issues arise about the way society strives to “normalize” deaf people: “Her specialists may hear her not, because her ears are not working for them.” The story raises questions concerning the limitations of what speech can do and how the hearing community's ways of using language are so institutionalized we don't always acknowledge different forms of communication. There's also a tense element to the story as we're aware the grandmother's time is short and she wants to do what she can to ensure her granddaughter's security while cherishing the special bond they share.
I felt immediately sympathetic to the grandmother as each entry begins with a description of the weather and my grandmother kept a journal in a similar way where the weather is always mentioned. As the book goes on, these brief observations about the weather come to reflect much more her psychological and spiritual state of being. She's someone who stands somewhat outside the mainstream like an ageing hippy (at one point she notes going to an Irish ashram) and I think this makes her especially attentive to the limited ways her granddaughter is treated. Because of her own hearing issues and advanced age, she finds it difficult to learn the sign language which her granddaughter fairly quickly picks up. So they need to invent their own way of speaking and they do this by spending time in nature developing unique ways of conveying an observation, feeling or question – especially as it's related to the movement of trees in the breeze or signs which can be gleaned from closely observing life in the natural world.
The grandmother is forming a catalogue of the trees in their area by drawing them and she refers to her process of attempting to do this - though it's cut short by her physical limitations. I wish some of this artwork had been reproduced in the text and it's interesting to hear in an interview conducted by Shawn the Book Maniac that following this novel's publication Lynn Buckle (who is also an artist) has created some pictures based exactly on what the grandmother describes. Though I found this story very moving, I felt the text sometimes got too poetic and abstract so I struggled at points to understand exactly what was happening in both these characters' lives. But its central message is conveyed in a powerful way. Out of necessity the granddaughter must constantly invent new ways of speaking: “She rewrites dictionaries for all who meet her.” Of course, on some level, creating a particular language is something we all do in the close bonds we form with other people as we all develop a shorthand or way of communicating which is special to that relationship. It's beautiful how this story emphasizes such a distinctive bond while alluding to larger issues concerning our perceptions of deafness and the environment.
