So, before we get into today’s post, go mosey on over to Bad Words and read Tulpen’s post: Either Way. Then come on back over and let’s talk.
Tulpen’s son, Owen, told his mom, “Don’t want to be Deaf. Want to be Hearing.”
I can relate. That’s pretty much how I felt– from the time I first began losing my hearing in elementary school until I became deaf. I can remember being able to hear–I would crawl into bed and listen to my dad tell me the story of Scamp and Tiny– two dogs that went on adventures all over town. I can also remember the day that I stopped crawling into bed– I could no longer understand what my dad was saying in the dark. I had become sick with a high fever for nearly a week and shortly after that, I had the “hard of hearing” label tacked on. I was never able to use the phone after that. The words that entered my brain were pretty much scrambled and I resorted to lipreading.
I hated the hearing aid. Hated the daily struggle to access communication. I often wished that I had normal hearing. I held back on life, thinking that “if only I had normal hearing I would do this.” Or that.
In elementary school, the kids on the bus teased me, sometimes mercilessly. I kept my eyes straight ahead or I sometimes buried myself in a book on the rides home. My best friend, Pattie, defended me on the bus. Twelve years ago, I received a letter out of the blue from one of my tormenters, asking forgiveness. He had become a born-again Christian and the teasing had weighed heavily on him over the years.
I had long ago forgiven, I just didn’t know it. The forgiveness came from the journey to acceptance– in the form of a severe whack on the head when I tripped on a wake while barefoot water skiing. I was nineteen. I could no longer hear anything without a hearing aid perched in my ears. But it turned out to be the very best thing to happen to me. I finally, after years and years of battling, finally accepted the whole me. I embraced the new journey and my world filled up with new deaf and hard of hearing friends and American Sign Language became a part of life. As for me– I was deaf– and it was okay.
Then one by one, my kids started collecting audiograms. David was nearly three, Lauren was four, and Steven was two– and then we started killing more trees and collecting IEP paperwork. And like Owen, each one of my kids has had their days when they wished they had hearing in the normal range. And when they expressed that, my heart always did a little blip. More often than not, it was a cycle– a season in their life– where they became more self-aware, or they matured, or a struggle of some kind would trigger it. The rest of the time, all was well–they would settle back into being comfortable and happy with life again.
And it might surprise some of you to know that I even have moments of self-pity when I wish I could hear. I had one of those moments while sitting at a banquet after a tournament this summer– and tears started to fall. My friend Sharon was my interpreter that night and I told her what I was feeling. I was reflecting over the whole summer of tournaments. “I wish I could hear the announcements, the conversations that flow around me, the jokes that get told on the boat– I miss out on all that stuff. And sometimes I can’t lipread some of the folks I meet…” I whined. Yes, I whined.
We are human. In moments of humaness (is that even a word?) all of us wish for something else. Thinner, taller, younger, smarter, richer–whatever it is, that darn grass is always greener somewhere else. But ultimately, we have to cultivate that little patch of green we’re standing on. We have to bloom where we are planted. Corny–yes–but it’s something I live by.
Oh, and those announcements that I wished I could hear? Well, at one of the tournaments, another barefooter said to me, “You’re lucky you can’t hear Dave (the announcer) — he goes on and on and on– sometimes I wish I could turn my ears off.”
The grass is always greener…