Hearing the World

My hearing aids were lost for a while. They'd been annoying me on our last visit to San Francisco, which I put down to the head cold I'd been battling. The air pressure, the internal swelling, the itchiness I couldn't shake all led me to take them out on the plane home and put them someplace safe.

As usual, putting them someplace safe meant that I couldn't find them when I got home.  I searched everywhere. I stuck my hands into pockets of my suitcase that had not been touched since the lint in my palm was a full sheet of paper.  

I remembered worrying, as I hid them, that the plastic tubing would be crushed by the space they were occupying. I just couldn't remember where that space was.

I opened travel cases.  I poured out the contents of my dop kits - the one with the wet stuff and the one with the dry stuff.  I went back to the garage and dumped the suitcase out all over again. I opened the hidden compartments in my wallet, though there was no way that the devices would have fit there.  For a while, I thought about phoning Southwest Airlines and asking if they had been turned into the lost and found; for some reason, I never made the call. 

Actually, I knew exactly why I never made the call: if they weren't in the SWA Lost and Found then I was on the hook for replacing them.  I also knew why I'd lost them: the audiologist had explained the replacement program/insurance for lost or damaged devices at my last visit, two weeks before we flew.  

I'd never considered the possibility that I would lose them since I made a promise to myself that I would wear them all the time, unlike Daddooooo who kept them in his breast pocket as often as he inserted them in his ears.  If I only took them out at night, I would always know where they were.  Though this plan led to several near escapes in the shower, I'd never misplaced them. Not once. For those who are intimately acquainted with my behavior, this must come as a shock.

I found them last week as I was taking G'ma's checkbook out of the zipper pocket of the leather purse I'd forgotten I'd taken on my trip.  There they were, entwined together, in fine fettle.  All they needed were new batteries.  The world was alive once more.

Helen Keller wished for hearing more than sight, when asked which sense she'd most like to retrieve.  When everyone is laughing and you haven't been able to decipher the punch line through the teller's giggles.... when the kids in the backseat accuse you of not being interested when you really didn't hear them at all... when the television's volume control is set at 30 and you still can't figure out what Don Draper is saying.... then you understand the loneliness of the hearing impaired. Luckily, my damage is only in the upper ranges; I'm well within normal limits (and what a nice sound that is to hear) except for high pitched tones.

Beethoven composed symphonies without hearing a note, or so they say.  I think he heard each and every one of them inside his head, the same way I hear the Cuter's individual "Hello"'s, even when they are thousands of miles from my ears. I tilt my head a different way for each of them.  

G'ma's "Hi, Suz" has a richness that the rest of her words lack.  There's love and, for the moment, a real connection to the outside world. The way it's delivered is so much more potent than the words themselves. 

Mr. 8's "Hello, Crazy Susan," a throwback from my college days upon which he stumbled one afternoon, has always been accompanied by a devilish twinkle in his eyes.  Today, after two hours of testing me and re-calibrating my hearing aids, with the help of the UofA's Audiology Clinic and three of its finest students I can hear the high pitched glee that's in there, too.

I'm finding the keyboard keys' clacking very annoying.

What used to be a hum is now a gale force wind emanating from my desk top's tower.

The air conditioner turns on with a click loud enough to startle me.

The world is a very noisy place. I'm so glad to be here to hear it.