Santa Fe Snow (2007), painting by Clark Hulings.
With my wonderful new hearing aids and my wonderful new eyes and my wonderful health, I have little to complain about aging, but the culture around us has learned how to focus our attention on the downside and to make money off of that.
In the audiologist’s waiting room, the other day I saw an ad framed and posted on a wall from one of our movie theatres.
It read, “HEARING LOSS GOES TO THE MOVIES.”
Apparently, there is now a group—probably called a support group—for people who have become hard of hearing. I wonder if this is one of the reasons so many men I know refuse to get hearing aids: if it means that one’s primary definition is hearing loss, who wants it?
Maybe the movie theatre is planning to up the volume of the movies this group is planning to attend; maybe there will be special door prizes—velvet-covered boxes to put your aids in when they are not in your ears, pleasant posters to post on your front door, reading, “HEARING LOSS LIVES HERE.” Maybe that identification eventually overwhelms all the definitions we’ve worked so hard to accrue: writer, musician, banker, lawyer, etc.
And maybe that’s why the receptionist had a hard time erasing “retired” from my profile, entered by some well-meaning busy-body years ago.
As I told her, somewhat defensively, I admit, “My publisher would be astonished to hear that I’ve retired since I have two books being published in 2020.”
It’s also somewhat worrisome that strangers have become a tad too helpful: “Watch out for that patch of ice”; “Take my arm on these steps”; “Let me get that door for you….”
I think I’d rather fall down in the street, which would be easy to do today in snowy, icy Santa Fe—at its most beautiful, and, like everything beautiful, somewhat treacherous.
Thank God there are still dogs, and children.
Pip, galloping ahead of me on the snowy trail this morning, is not concerned with hearing or its loss. In fact, since in his eyes I am something of a tyrant, insisting that he sit down in the snow to have his leash attached, and sit again rather than rushing up to a passing dog, he might not mind it if I couldn’t hear and therefore might issue fewer commands.
And children!
As Pip was waiting for me this morning outside our overcrowded neighborhood coffee house—the register had broken and they were only accepting cash, which slowed things down considerably—a beautiful, bright-faced boy of eleven or twelve took it upon himself to keep Pip company in the cold, patting him and talking to him. A true friend.
I doubt if this boy, or others like him, think much about hearing loss.
As for me, I have no intention of joining my hearing-aid buddies at the movies—unless Pip and this bright-faced boy can come with me.
Thank you for this, Sally. As I begin to notice signs of aging in myself and in my husband, my greatest hope is that we will still be seen for all of the things that we can do. Our spirits are strong and we are not done yet…not by a long shot.