Smile

  It was December 19, 1965, in Oakland. Martin Pidgeon, who is deaf. He was never taught sign language, though he loves to paint his feelings and his thoughts on broken, abandoned buildings. His drawings are all over the neighborhood. Everyone knew who was drawing these things because… One day, Martin was driving his pregnant wife to the hospital, when a truck passed a red light and flipped Martin's car eight times, stumbling down the street. 

He was injured badly, but his wife got it worse. Martin's vision was blurry but he noticed his wife wasn't moving. The cops came to pull Martin and his wife out, and put both of them on a stretcher. While heading to the hospital, the EMTs noticed that Martin is deaf, so there was no way of communicating with him. Martin and his wife were separated for a few weeks, until he received the news that his wife didn’t make it, but miraculously the baby did. Martin's heart was torn into millions of pieces. Nonstop crying, gesturing that he wants to see her. 

They took him to the hospital his wife is in and handed him the baby. He looked at his wife, then into his baby's eyes. The baby wasn’t crying, in fact it was smiling. He noticed that this baby smiles exactly like her mother. After a few months of recovery they head home. The dad always draws in front of his daughter. His daughter thought that was the only way to communicate. Martin taught her how to draw in a way that no one could imagine. 

Together they created masterpieces around their neighborhood. Drawings of what they saw around their neighborhood. Martin didn't know she was deaf, until he saw someone yelling at her for painting on an abandoned building, but she continued painting. Martin confronted the guy and told him to piss off, and walked up to his daughter and painted an image that asks if she can hear. She answered with a drawing of her father with big ears and shook her head, pointing at her ears, laughing. Martin laughed and smiled historically.