Airports

I hate airports. They make me feel helpless and thoroughly deaf.
 

You may not think so, but it's quite easy to forget one's handicaps in the normal routine of things.  The closed captioning is always set on the TV, J. knows not to talk to me when I have wet hair, my work colleagues have learned that my left side is my "good" side, and we tend to avoid avoid noisy places like bars, concerts, etc. (where all I ever do is sit/stand around and get lost in my thoughts...which isn't so bad, now that I think about it).  Once you settle into a groove, your actions become automatic, like breathing. 
 

Airports are not routine.  They are full of squawking intercoms, echoing corridors, and tiled floors that make the sound of rolling suitcases a special form of Chinese water torture.  Every specimen of the human race is dashing to and fro, intent on getting to whatever place they're going, and the sounds they make coalesce into an incoherent sea of mutterings and moanings. 
 

My hearing aid is powerful and expensive, but it can't slice through such a slog of chaos.  Fully aware of this, I make sure to keep in touch with the travel agents in case of any changes to my flight.  Sometimes they have me sit in the handicap seat, the color of a fire hydrant, where people look at me curiously, wondering what handicap I have, being neither in a wheelchair nor relying on any apparatus that they can discern.  
 

I don't start to relax until the plane has taken off and I look out the window at the earth dropping away below, the airport shrinking until it becomes a child's toy on a blanket of green fields threaded with rivers.  Then the plane lands in Kentucky where I disembark and see J. standing at the base of the elevators, a familiar, loved face in the midst of strangers.  He greets me with a voice that I have carefully memorized all the years I have known him and takes my hand. My handicap falls away as he leads me home.

Early warning system

 

Thankfully what I have is much smaller.

Water and the machine

I had an adventure this past Thursday night and Friday morning.

My hearing aid stopped working. 

This is always a curious experience, because not only is it a machine, it's also my hearing.  When a machine breaks down, you're appropriately put-out while you run through the list of possible reasons.  On the other hand, when your hearing breaks down, a host of other, more dire, concerns pushes to the forefront: am I losing what little hearing I have left? have I been afflicted with some disease of the ear?  will I be able to continue my present job if I'm completely deaf?  will I ever hear the birds again?!

I had to wait until the audiologist's office opened Friday morning.  When you have to wait, your concerns tend to multiply and take over your existence.  Thursday night and early Friday morning I kept clicking my tongue and calling the cats, just to assure myself that what little hearing I had was still functional (it was...but I had to be sure).  During the half hour drive to the audiologist's office, I started over-analyzing every vibration in the car, almost certain it was going to break down on me.

Then I told myself to get over it, shoved all my little worries into the back of my head, and let my mind wander.  Thinking is a lot easier when you don't have any sounds to distract you.  I can't recall most of what I daydreamed--for all I know, I was close to figuring out the meaning of life.  Then I got to the audiologist, where she pulled out a box of what looked like torture devices, fiddled around with the tubes of my hearing aid, poked out a 1/4 inch filter and restored my hearing. 

"These things are more trouble than they're worth," she said, holding up the tiny slip of filter, which had become logged with moisture.  Moisture is what obstructed my hearing.  I couldn't help but feel a new-found appreciation for the elements of nature.  We construct all manner of devices to overcome the inconveniences that nature puts in our way, and she can still manage to be inconvenient.

L'chaim

Last week, one of the sons of the ladies I work with was suffering from a high grade fever.  They were worried that he might have meningitis.  While chatting with some colleagues who have children of their own, the subject turned to this sick boy as someone relayed the message that he was getting better.  I mentioned how relieved I was to hear that he was out of the woods, as I had gotten sick with meningitis and lost my hearing as a result. 

After this conversation, I realized what an odd situation I was in.  Here I was, a happily healthy, rather normal person who just happened to have a disability that resulted from the infection we were talking about.  And I was contemplating how awful it would be for this little boy to be afflicted by the very same thing that I had survived.  I may not be explaining very well why I found this situation a little odd.  I certainly wasn't wishing on this child what I had suffered.  But to commiserate about a terrible infection and the possibility of irreparable damage to one's hearing made me uncomfortable because I've developed a determination not to feel sorry for myself.  This determination (and it is determination because I am a introspective person) has made me a much more content person.

I still remember the throes of self-pity I threw myself into when I was a teenager.  It took a very brutal, startling retort from my father to shake me out of my melancholy.  I haven't looked back since.

What I'm thankful for today, I'm not sure.  It's a tangled web of thoughts and emotions I'm trying to sort through.  Am I thankful for being hearing impaired?  Obviously not, but then again, it's made me who I am.  I guess what I'm trying to get at is life itself.  I may have been dealt a different set of cards than many people, but, somehow, lacking a sense makes you all the more keen to seize life.  You're making up, not for lost time, but for lost experiences.  I may not know what it's like to wake up to the sound of voices in the kitchen as someone prepares coffee, or what it's like to distinguish the sounds of birds from the wind, or what it's like to carry on a conversation with someone across the room, but what I do pick up on, whether by sound, sight, smell, taste or touch, I treasure. 

"If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence."--George Eliot

A dog for many things

I think I need a hearing ear dog. According to Dogs for the Deaf, they are trained to alert you to sounds such as the telephone, a door knock, oven timer, even a baby's cry. Just think, I could have a dog to keep me company at work. He could nudge my knee whenever the phone rings, or tug my sleeve whenever someone comes over to talk to me...

Not that my own animals are inept. Pope always perks up whenever someone comes to the door, or when the phone rings. My old dog would bark and pace in front of the door. I didn't even have to train them for this.

The silence of everyday things

I spent the day without my hearing aid, due to an infection that refused to be subdued. I think the last time I went without my hearing aid for a day was 8 or 10 years ago when my ear swelled shut, like a clam jealously guarding its treasure.

It was (and is) a curious experience. You would think that being nearly deaf like me, I would be accustomed to it. And I am, to the extent that I look forward to being swaddled in silence every night. But to be up and about, doing things, with a vociferous cat underfoot, and not hearing any of it, is strange. My brain begins to reach for the sounds that it feels should be there. The rustle of a shirt, the tapping of fingers against the keyboard, the hiss of water shooting out of the faucet, the cat chirping at the birds outside. I find myself rehearsing those sounds in my mind, and, like the person trying too hard to remember the face of a person she treasured, losing my grip on them the harder I try.

A normal morning

I think Jon learned something new about what it's like to live with a hard-of-hearing person.

Earlier this week, he accidentally locked himself out of the house one morning while going outside to warm his car up. As this was a workday, he needed to get inside pretty quick to get the rest of his stuff.

I was in the bathroom at this time, enjoying the warmth of our space heater while getting ready for work.

He started out by knocking on the door (which I didn't hear). Then ringing the doorbell (which I didn't notice). Then pounding on the door (which I didn't notice). Then furiously assaulting the door and doorbell (which I still didn't register). By this time, he realized that I was not coming to the door and that he would need to figure out another way to get in. So he climbed on top of the first floor back-porch, crawled up and over the roof of the house, and squeezed through a window into our front room.

When I say I didn't "notice" or "register" these frantic noises he was making, I mean that I did hear them, but that my brain (bless its heart, trying to process mumbo-jumbo) translated these various noises as: Pope galloping through the apartment (which he does often enough) and Jon gargling salt water (he had a cold at this time). How the doorbell could sound like gargles is beyond me, but that's just the closest match my brain could come up with.

Be careful what you wish for

I came across this title at work: American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb.

This reminded me of how sometimes I would think about what it would be like to live "back then," such as in Jane Austen's time. Then I would wonder what it would really be like if I was transported warts, hearing impairment and all, into the Regency era. I suppose, considering the fact that I've been hard of hearing (to the point that I am more likely to feel thunder, not hear it) since I was little, I would be considered dumb, especially if I did not have someone like Anne Sullivan to work with me. It's a sobering realization, especially just for daydreaming--I shouldn't be so literal in my imagination.

By the way, the title was changed to American Annals of the Deaf in 1886.

We are always dancing

Even though I am a thoroughly clumsy dancer (at those rare moments I compelled to dance--and even then, I am not as bad as Jon), my outer ear cells are skilled at dancing. Scientists cannot come up with a better term for describing how the cells of our outer ear propel and amplify sound before it enters the innermost parts of our ears. They dance to coax the sound waves to expand as they transform into electrical signals, so that when the brain is ready to translate what it receives, it has the best copy available, so to speak.

Thanks to D. for bringing this to my attention.