Beech Tree News Network

My husband, Garey, can’t hear, and I’m quickly closing in on that condition myself.  We’re not deaf, we just can’t understand some of the words being said to us.  We’re constantly repeating things for one another, and we’re constantly asking, “What?” 

            Sometimes, I pretend to hear what he’s saying just so I won’t be so annoying.  He does the same.  I know he does the same, because one afternoon, I said, “I changed my mind about the pot pies.”

To which he asked, “What pot pies?”  To which I answered, “The pot pies I told you I was fixing for dinner.”  To which he said, “All I heard was the word DINNER, and you know how I am, you can fix anything, and I’ll eat it.”  Which is true, he does. 

            There are times when I say things like, “Garey, why didn’t you tell me the new coffee shop was open?” 

            “I did tell you the new coffee shop was open,” he says.  “We discussed at length how clever the name is.”

            “You never told me,” I protest.  Too quickly, as it turns out.  Something from the deep recesses of my mind makes its way to the frontal lobe.  The words COFFEE SHOP are now front and center.  “Wait a minute,” I say, “I think you did tell me.”  It was one of those conversations I pretended to hear but didn’t hear in its entirety. 

            Garey has hearing aids—courtesy of the VA—and plenty of batteries to go with them.  He only wears them, however, when we’re around people we don’t know very well, because he doesn’t want to ask them a gazillion times what they just said.  I don’t have hearing aids, because I don’t want to shell out the money for them.  I’d rather have a new Jaguar.  I’ve figured out that hearing aids are ridiculously expensive by way of the embossed invitations I receive in the mail from places like Miracle Ear, Bell Tone and Better Hearing centers, all of which include one hundred dollar coupons for their last year’s model.  If they’re going to give me one hundred dollars off last year’s model, I figure the new ones cost well over a thousand dollars.  I’m willing to annoy a lot of people for a thousand dollars.

            Garey’s mom, Aggie, has gotten really hard of hearing.  Garey’s sister, Charlotte, is always trying to convince Aggie to get hearing aids, but Aggie doesn’t want hearing aids.  Aggie is ninety-one years old.  She is blind in her left eye and has lost some of the sight in her right eye.  Charlotte tells Aggie if she is unwilling to wear hearing aids, she had better work out some sort of tapping system to communicate to her children what she wants, just in case she goes completely deaf and loses the sight in her good eye.  “Tap once for NO and two times for YES,” she tells her mother.  Aggie just rolls her good eye and ignores her.

            If you watch TV with Aggie, you can understand why Charlotte wants her to wear hearing aids.  Someone has to always repeat what the person talking has just said, which means everybody misses the next thing the person who is talking is saying.  Thank God, for DVRs and pausing and rewinding live-action TV.  We do that a lot at Aggie’s house.  Actually, we do that a lot at our house.

            When Garey and I watch TV, we keep the Closed Caption on in order to both hear and see what is being said.  This solution only works, however, if we’re both giving the program our full attention.  If it’s during the summer garden season and we’re shelling peas or breaking beans—an activity in which we are constantly glancing down at the produce in our containers—one or the other of us will inevitably miss something, which means an explanation from the one who didn’t miss it or a complete rewind of the segment missed.  We usually opt for the rewind.  A thirty-minute sitcom can take up to a full hour to watch.  Old age teaches patience, if nothing else.

            You know that Robert Browning quote, “Grow old with me, the best is yet to be.”  It will have to be revised for Garey and me to, “Grow old with me, the best is yet to see.”  We sure as heck won’t be able to hear it.