All Apologies: My Biggest Regret
24 years ago I played a game with my first boyfriend that I'd played many times before with other friends. He and I sat in the backseat together while my mother drove us to the mall. In low tones, I rattled off a series of some of the most wildly inappropriate comments that my fourteen year-old mind could think up, stuff like "shit," "fuck," and "shut up!" My boyfriend turned red, hissing "Stop it! Oh my God!" his nudging and shoving to make me stop giving way to nervous giggles as my mother continued driving the car, calmly, appearing to hear nothing. She seemed to be in her own placid world.
Lately I have begun to notice a problem in me that my mother developed over 38 years ago, around the time I was born. My husband mumbles something, and I only catch a few sounds. My brain struggles to process what I heard. "What?!" I ask him, "you want to sell the farm?!" That can't be right.
"No," he replies, "I said 'It shouldn't be so far'." Oh. We laugh. I feel stupid.
We treated mom like she was stupid. We talked behind her back, we mimicked her, we treated her occasionally hysterical behavior as some symptom of looniness and not of her frustration with the hearing world. And I was probably the worst, even using her as a prop to startle my friends, like she was some freak sideshow.
"What?! What?!" she always asked us, my brothers, my father, and me. Sometimes we were too tired of repeating ourselves to recap the whole story, and we gave her a clipped version of whatever our point had been, sometimes just a single word answer to sum up the conversation we'd been having around her, some chatter we deemed too inconsequential to bother repeating verbatim:
"Snow!" my father finally shouts, after some talk about the weather.
"School!" I shout, exasperated, after relaying a few events marking the start of a new term.
"Oh," she replies, and doesn't ask for more.
My brothers, these days, seem a lot more patient with her, sometimes repeating everything, all over again. But they, too, are losing their hearing; and shared experience breeds sympathy.
And now it's my turn. My stepson mumbles something. "What did you say?!" I ask him, defensively, assuming he's talking back. Usually he isn't, but I just don't know. I ask him and my husband to repeat themselves over and over. I do the same with my students. I talk really loud.
On the first day of my graduate class this semester, my latest professor talked to us about nonfiction, the syllabus, his thoughts on writing. I leaned over the conference table and cupped my left ear to help me decipher his low, gravelly voice, his genteel southern accent. I noticed the classmate to my right was wearing a hearing aid in her left ear.
"So are you having any trouble understanding him?" I asked her at break. She explained that she recently had surgery, some kind of implant grafted to her skull inside her right ear, and that now, for the first time since she was seven, she could hear quite well.
"I hear something in stereo, and I think 'so THIS is what it's supposed to sound like!"
My professor walked back into the room and joined the conversation, agreed to speak louder and clearer, but not for her sake. For mine.
I haven't had my hearing checked in ten years. Ten years ago, it was fine. I cling to that diagnosis in fear. I'm not ready to live in my mother's world, full of people talking everywhere and not a point to be made, not a punchline to be caught.
In the 38 years since her first hearing aid, my mother has missed the punchlines to thousands of jokes, created strange family gossip from misunderstanding, unknowingly snubbed people in passing, and laughed at inappropriate moments. That's how I really know how much she is missing. Someone at church mentions a death in the family, but she expresses it with a positive glow. "Hah hah!" my mother responds, assuming we're just making light chit chat.
No conversation is inconsequential when you can't hear it, when everyone else is in on it but you. I asked my classmate to email me some specifics about her operation, and I really hated myself for asking about this operation now, after so many years of watching my mother struggle.
My professor made us interview strangers on the street that first week. We asked them personal questions, too: What is your gladdest moment? What is the hardest thing you ever had to do? What is your biggest regret? I had my own set of answers all planned just in case someone turned the tables on me. But I've been giving a lot more thought to that last one, and I've amended my first answer. I think this regret is much bigger, has been around for much longer. How do you make it up someone you left out for 38 years?
Lately I have begun to notice a problem in me that my mother developed over 38 years ago, around the time I was born. My husband mumbles something, and I only catch a few sounds. My brain struggles to process what I heard. "What?!" I ask him, "you want to sell the farm?!" That can't be right.
"No," he replies, "I said 'It shouldn't be so far'." Oh. We laugh. I feel stupid.
We treated mom like she was stupid. We talked behind her back, we mimicked her, we treated her occasionally hysterical behavior as some symptom of looniness and not of her frustration with the hearing world. And I was probably the worst, even using her as a prop to startle my friends, like she was some freak sideshow.
"What?! What?!" she always asked us, my brothers, my father, and me. Sometimes we were too tired of repeating ourselves to recap the whole story, and we gave her a clipped version of whatever our point had been, sometimes just a single word answer to sum up the conversation we'd been having around her, some chatter we deemed too inconsequential to bother repeating verbatim:
"Snow!" my father finally shouts, after some talk about the weather.
"School!" I shout, exasperated, after relaying a few events marking the start of a new term.
"Oh," she replies, and doesn't ask for more.
My brothers, these days, seem a lot more patient with her, sometimes repeating everything, all over again. But they, too, are losing their hearing; and shared experience breeds sympathy.
And now it's my turn. My stepson mumbles something. "What did you say?!" I ask him, defensively, assuming he's talking back. Usually he isn't, but I just don't know. I ask him and my husband to repeat themselves over and over. I do the same with my students. I talk really loud.
On the first day of my graduate class this semester, my latest professor talked to us about nonfiction, the syllabus, his thoughts on writing. I leaned over the conference table and cupped my left ear to help me decipher his low, gravelly voice, his genteel southern accent. I noticed the classmate to my right was wearing a hearing aid in her left ear.
"So are you having any trouble understanding him?" I asked her at break. She explained that she recently had surgery, some kind of implant grafted to her skull inside her right ear, and that now, for the first time since she was seven, she could hear quite well.
"I hear something in stereo, and I think 'so THIS is what it's supposed to sound like!"
My professor walked back into the room and joined the conversation, agreed to speak louder and clearer, but not for her sake. For mine.
I haven't had my hearing checked in ten years. Ten years ago, it was fine. I cling to that diagnosis in fear. I'm not ready to live in my mother's world, full of people talking everywhere and not a point to be made, not a punchline to be caught.
In the 38 years since her first hearing aid, my mother has missed the punchlines to thousands of jokes, created strange family gossip from misunderstanding, unknowingly snubbed people in passing, and laughed at inappropriate moments. That's how I really know how much she is missing. Someone at church mentions a death in the family, but she expresses it with a positive glow. "Hah hah!" my mother responds, assuming we're just making light chit chat.
No conversation is inconsequential when you can't hear it, when everyone else is in on it but you. I asked my classmate to email me some specifics about her operation, and I really hated myself for asking about this operation now, after so many years of watching my mother struggle.
My professor made us interview strangers on the street that first week. We asked them personal questions, too: What is your gladdest moment? What is the hardest thing you ever had to do? What is your biggest regret? I had my own set of answers all planned just in case someone turned the tables on me. But I've been giving a lot more thought to that last one, and I've amended my first answer. I think this regret is much bigger, has been around for much longer. How do you make it up someone you left out for 38 years?