Musical daughter here for a visit
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Jan 05/01) - Hayley Halushka played music and sang before she could walk or talk.
"She was born with the gift of music," says her mother.
Barb says it all started when Hayley was a baby and responded to a mobile that turned to Brahms' Lullaby.
This was an important revelation for the young mother: she was exposed to German measles when she was pregnant and Hayley, as a result, was born with Rubella Syndrome. The doctors had told Barb that Hayley was not only blind, but also completely deaf.
The professionals further suggested that Hayley should be institutionalized.
"I refused," says Barb.
"I tested her a lot, on my own. I went by what I saw."
And what Barb saw was that her daughter responded to music.
Hayley, now 26, is a young, independent woman many Yellowknifers will remember. She first came North with her family via Yellowknife.
She now calls Whitehorse home, living with Dodie and Seymour Lewis -- her mother moved back to Yellowknife a year ago.
Hayley runs her own business with friends, plays music at church and jams with other players.
"A lot of time we take her down for karaoke.
"We just let them know what words she knows. And she plays, not just with my husband's band, but with a lot of other bands that come down to jam," says Dodie Lewis, who with her husband runs the therapeutic home where Hayley lives.
This Christmas, while visiting her mother, Hayley played her music at City Hall and several Yellowknife churches.
Recalling the early years, when Yellowknife had never integrated a blind child into one of its schools, Barb says there were bumps.
"The blind leading the blind," jokes Hayley, getting a good, long laugh from her statement.
Mother and daughter may no longer live close together but they continue to have a devoted relationship. When asked a question, Hayley pauses, thinking. Soon Barb and she begin talking, almost simultaneously. It's as though they can read each other's minds.
"We had to communicate by touch, by feel," explains Barb.
In her lifetime, Hayley has had 18 corrective surgeries. Besides the 20 per cent hearing she had in one ear at birth, she gained 40 per cent in the other ear as of four years ago.
"That's made all the difference in the world," says Barb.
Already a piano and organ player, Hayley picked up the saxophone in Grade 7.
"It was hard to learn how to put the sax together, but it got easier," says Hayley.
"Music is a part of my life," she adds.
While in Yellowknife growing up, she was often invited to play for special events.
"I have no favourites," she says.
"I love all music."
