Grendel’s Kitchen

April, 1999: Grendel — our sweet lab mix found / purchased / rescued from the banks of the Charles River — has been with us since, bringing great joy, balance, responsibility, high vet bills, and comedy to our lives. Grendel’s Kitchen is home to Grendel (of course), John (an unwillingly transplanted Virginian who spends his days teaching high school kids and his evenings directing plays), me (a New Yorker who fell in love with — and in — Virginia yet now works at a lovely ivy-covered university just outside Boston, hoping some of that vaunted brain power will seep into my head as I tread those ancient pathways and halls), Gryphon (our adorable cat with his few extra toes — great luck for sea farers), and ten now 16 bantam cochin chickens (4 roosters, 6 hens, plus the results of two clutches of eggs I forgot to gather during our Labor Day vacation that have just hatched into 6 more … most likely all roosters, with our luck).

And there’s our other recent arrival, currently holding a green card, but soon to be a documented citizen: Anna-Li (Li-Li), born February 10, 2006 somewhere in China, joined us in February, 2007 after we spent 3 years navigating the adoption process and waiting — successfully — for the perfect match. But that’s another story … actually, she’s what this entire site is all about.

Li-Li is delightful, brilliant, beautiful, exasperating, and pretty special in so many ways. The brief report available in her paperwork from the Heng Feng Social Welfare Institute (her orphanage in Jiangxi) noted, surprisingly, that she was “obstinate.” She obviously gets that from me. What was not noted, or known at the time, was that she is profoundly deaf in both ears, mostly likely from birth, although even after extensive genetic testing, we don’t know the cause, genetic or otherwise. But we figured that out within a few days, although the official diagnosis didn’t come in for a few months.

In September, 2007, Li-Li received her first cochlear implant at 17 months and was then activated at 19 months, and in August, 2007, she’s gone stereo: our little ciborg is now bilaterally implanted, activated in September — both successful surgeries conducted by Dr. David Roberson at Children’s Hospital, Boston. She learns both ASL and spoken English at the wonderful Learning Center for the Deaf in Framingham, so she’s a bi-bi-bi baby: bicultural, bilingual, and bilateral. And I’ve tried to document her words, but just can’t keep up: yes, she’s both a chatterbox and she outsigns us!

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