Good Earthkeeping, by Tasha Halpert –
I remember my great-grandmother’s ear trumpet. It was a long instrument, flared at one end. She held the small end to her ear. I also remember a black box the size and shape of a thick brick that had a cord running from it, sitting on a table. That must have been an early hearing instrument. My grandmother wore a case the sizes of a slim cigarette pack clipped to the front of her dress with a cord connected between it and a button in her ear. There was a dial on the box she could turn on and off.
My dad used to say she turned it off when she didn’t want to hear what was being said. I remember as a child thinking how handy that must be.
Aids to hearing have come a very long way since then. As people age, much like the normal need for eyeglasses to address vision, so too there is a need for aids to hear. Unfortunately these are extremely expensive compared to eyeglasses. Hopefully one day this will change.
Because of deafness that seems to run in my family, I was not surprised when my own hearing began to diminish. I found I needed to have the TV on louder. It was helpful to watch movies on DVD with subtitles, especially when the actors had British accents. If Stephen spoke to me, and I was in the other room, I had to get closer to hear what he was telling me.
Ambient noise interfered with my understanding of words; parties were less fun. My children noticed and suggested I get a hearing aid. Still, I wasn’t sure I really needed them—or so I thought. Then as luck would have it I was gifted with a set. My daughter offered me her late mother-in-law’s hearing aids. I was very glad I said yes. It has been an adventure for me to use them. I find myself marveling at sounds I have not really heard before, or have not for a long time.
I remember my mother telling me that when my grandmother put on her new hearing aid and went outdoors she said, “What’s all that noise?” It was the birds chirping. She had not heard birds for many years. My ears have not been that bad. I have been able to hear, more or less, just not clearly. I notice the difference with the aids. Without them it’s like I have water in my ears. With them, when I turn on the faucet, I hear splashes and ripples. When I unwrap paper it crackles. The stove timer sounds shrill. I hear sounds I didn’t before.
In the past, when I thought about getting hearing aids, I felt somewhat uncomfortable. I expected them to be clumsy, perhaps difficult to manage. None of this has proved true. Today’s aids are quite different from those of my grandmother’s or even of recent times. They are virtually invisible. I am very grateful to my daughter for her thoughtfulness, and I look forward to learning more about the new world I am hearing. As I have come to appreciate the clarity I get from wearing eyeglasses, now I enjoy the adventure of listening to a new and different world.
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