I Can't Hear You

One of the not so delightful aspects of aging is hearing loss.

Both my parents had hearing loss, although I often suspected my father was faking it so he'd be left alone, because if I said something I didn't want him to hear when I was on the phone way across the room, he heard it clearly and sometimes made a tart remark. That sort of thing can make a kid jumpy.

My mother was in denial to the end of her life. Once when she was visiting me, we were driving down the Main Highway, and she kept saying, "What?" to everything I said.

I finally said, "You know, you can get hearing aids if you need them." I was trying to be helpful and caring. She didn't see it that way. She was ticked off, and then she ticked me off. She said, "My hearing is fine. It's you. You mumble. You have no frontal resonance. You never did."

So that was the end of that subject between us.

(Fyi, Google says, “Frontal resonance, also known as the ‘mask of singing,’ is a vocal technique that involves resonating sound closer to the front of the face. This can reduce the impact on the vocal folds, which can make speaking more efficient.”

I remember Mrs. Varin, my voice teacher, trying to get me to make my upper palate and nose - that mask - vibrate with sound when I sang. I did not realize that was frontal resonance.

The other part of singing was sustaining my sound with breath that came from my diaphragm. That seemed to be the most important information I picked up in three years of voice lessons. Breathe from the belly. Later I took lessons from Kendall Aikin Davis here on the island, and she told me one day to support my voice with my breath, "like you're taking a dump."

Oh. Okay. 

But that's sending sound out. Receiving sound, mishearing it, and misunderstanding what someone is saying, is part of aging. I suppose it doesn't happen to everyone. Maybe my mother's hearing was just fine. Too late to determine that now.

When I was in my fifties, I noticed that I was having a hard time hearing what people said. There are three main factors in my hearing loss: one, aging; two, all those over-the-counter painkillers I took during my migraine years; and three, all those incredibly loud rock concerts and dances I went to in the 1960s. 

At the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, when bands were playing, I heard whistling, which stopped when the music stopped, and I thought it was the crowd showing their enjoyment of the music, cheering and whistling. Years later I realized that cheering and whistling was the sound of my inner ears screaming in pain. So yeah, a little hearing loss there.

Three years ago, when I went to my grandson's high school graduation, I found myself frequently saying, "What?" "Sorry, I couldn't hear that," and "Say again?"  By that time, I had also noticed that when I was in a noisy place, like a restaurant, where people were talking and laughing, and dishes and utensils were clattering, I could not hear what anyone was saying at my table.

I realized it was time for hearing aids. There was a slight delay after I fell on Sporty's back patio and broke a vertebra (L3, if you're interested). But after that, when I was able to drive again, I trundled down to the Tacoma Costco and got some hearing aids. They worked fine. I'm wearing them right now.

 I don't wear them all the time. When I'm at home by myself I often don't put them in because they are foreign objects and after a few hours they start to hurt. I can turn up the TV or whatever else I'm listening to when I’m alone.

When I am not wearing my hearing aids, I sometimes mis-hear things. Recently I was listening to someone talking about "Durable Power of Attorney," and what I heard was, "Gerbil power of attorney."

Last Sunday when I was listening to the church service online, when the priest was reading the Gospel, I heard, "Jesus and his apostles were walking through the drain field ...” Now I knew that couldn't be right. I don't think they had drain fields in first century Palestine. As the scripture went on, I realized they were walking through a grainfield, not a drain field. Whew. That was a relief.

As Miss Emily Latella used to say, that's very different, isn't it?