William BorstAfter a weekend of football and the presidential inauguration, my problem is not that I had nothing to write about but that there were just too many interesting topics from which to choose. Unfortunately, most of the news events before, during and after President Trump’s inauguration, have been so varied that I need some time for them to pass through my significance filter. I have cut out 20 interesting topics from three daily newspapers that range from pardons, the DEI repeals, to the California Inferno and The Left’s Mangled Guardrails.
I have gotten other ideas from my current reading, such as Fulton J. Sheen’s, classic book The Divine Romance, first published in 1930. In his chapter on the Blessed Trinity, the bishop raises Plato’s question: What does God think about? My quick answer was: Us? Then there was my wanderings through the WSJ’s Peggy Noonan’s latest book. Her A Certain Idea of America is a repository of several years of her best essays. Reading her is like immersing oneself in a lyrical poem which dances all over the intellectual and moral stratosphere.
More out of exhaustion than desperation, I settled on a clipping I had brought with me from home. It is the inspiring story of Sara Mearns, who was appearing on stage as the Sugarplum fairy, wearing something more precious than a jewel-encrusted tiara. This was according to NY Times journalist, Gia Kourlas article, Pointe Shoes On, Hearing Aids In.
Like countless thousands of people in this country, Mearns is a member of the invisible handicapped. It had been three weeks since she had been fitted with her semi-permanent hearing aids and just a week since she returned to her role in George Balanchine, The Nutcracker, playing at the New York City Ballet.
Her reaction to the change in her hearing has been remarkable. I heard every single noise possible…backstage…onstage. The shoes on the stage sounded like cymbals in my ears. The music was so loud. The audience was ridiculously loud…
Mearns had been coping with serious hearing loss for the last decade. During that time, she had missed entrances, cues and hardly could hear the music…Now she hears chipping birds. Wind. Clicking shoes. Sounds she hadn’t heard in years.
The return of her lost sense brought tears to her eyes. It was as if she had been born again. I don’t have to be in pain anymore…embarrassed anymore. I don’t have to hide anymore. She has had some mental issues but did not say they had anything to do with her loss of hearing. Having experienced some of her problems I can say emphatically hearing loss works on your sense of worth, confidence and self-image. One feels compelled to apologize for every misunderstood word.
One of the first things an audiologist or an Otologist does is try to pin-point the cause of one’s hearing loss. Mearns traces hers to 10 years ago when she was in Brazil for a rehearsal for Carnival. It was held in a metal gym where around 100 drummers played for an hour. When she left the gym, she couldn’t hear anything. This lasted for a few days. So, she went to a doctor and registered hearing loss in both ears. It got progressively worse, especially during Covid when most people wore masks. It was at this point she realized that she had been watching people talk, not listening to them. Hearing technology has given her a new lease on life. Her hearing aids have restored her personhood again, as well as her confidence as a dancer and as a woman.
Mearns’ story reminds me of a salesman I noticed at Neiman Marcus about seven years ago. He had not one, but two cochlear implants, easily identifiable by the external magnet that holds his speech processor in place. I had been thinking about getting one. This led me to question him about his hearing loss and implants.
He had been virtually deaf for most of his life. He was married and had children but when they were little, he could not hear a word. As they grew up, he was pained by his inability to explain things to them and hear the silly and funny things children usually say. He seemed to tear up as he remembered his painful journey. He loved his implants and felt, like the ballerina, that he had been born again.
My own hearing loss, which began nearly four decades ago, was unique in that I had more serious degeneration in my right ear. I remember the Director of Otology at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis commenting about my uncommon condition. His exact words were: Somewhere in your life your right ear suffered an ‘insult.’ I quickly replied: Doc, I told you I did talk radio. They insulted both ears.
But in deep reflection, I could only think of a baseball game I had attended in 1979 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis where a fan sitting behind me yelled loudly in that ear. My late wife argued that it was the 22-years of weekly radio that did it. But again, the earphones were on both ears.
Mearns also reveals she made jokes about her hearing because she did not want people to feel strange or awkward about her problem. But inside she was hurting. The isolation it brought on was crushing. She ducked parties and celebrations because they caused too much stress. Her condition was not something she liked to discuss.
But now those days are over for her. She does not shy away from noisy restaurants, a concert or even the theater. Mearns learned that she was not alone. Several other dancers suffered from hearing loss as well. She hopes her choice to hear again with the latest technology will inspire others to get help.
As the Times essay concluded, I could sense the tears of joy that lay hidden behind her words. I know exactly how she felt. I remember when I had just gotten my new aid for my left ear and how astonished I was by how much it had improved my hearing. This was especially true in church where I had not heard a sermon in its entirety for several years. The inner joy I felt was palpable.
I am a little jealous of Mearns because the semi-permanent hearing aids were not available when I got my first one about 37 years ago. My initial ones were very small and fit snugly inside my ear. Over the years I went through a handful of them. My ears are ironically very healthy but that usually walks hand-in-hand with wax build-up. It was my excess wax production that literally suffocated my hearing aids. You have never lived until you have had something die inside your ear.
It was about this time I decided to get an implant for my right ear. I was able to sneak it in during the lull during Covid. For the first months of the pandemic, hospitals cancelled all elective surgeries, but in September of 2020, I was able to get the two-hour surgery as an out-patient. I remember coming out of the anesthetic and being greeted by my wonderful surgeon, Dr. James Benecke. Through his broad smile, he said in a high-pitched voice: You did just great! Still a little groggy, I managed to respond: Doc, isn’t the real question: How did you do?
My implant and my top-of-the line hearing aid for my left ear worked like a team for four years. But even with them, it has been extremely difficult for me to hear the priests in church anymore. Face-to-face is my only chance to understand any conversation. But now even that was slowly vanishing.
A few months ago, my audiologist in Georgia told me my last score on my good ear had been a flat 0%. Of 20 conversational words, I did not get one right. She said the last time she checked it was 20%. The bottom line was that I was functionally deaf and the high-price hearing aid that had functioned well with my implant was not helping any more. She suggested I consider a second implant–this one for my left ear. In early May of 2025, when they turn on my new speech processor a month after my surgery, I pray that the joy of normal hearing will have returned.
But until then, I will have to wing it with just my right implant and lots of movie subtitles, as my connection to the world of sound. After two months without an active left ear, I have noticed a precipitable decline in my balance. One needs to rely on both ears, your body awareness and your vision to maintain ones balance. If I close my eyes and try to walk, I would more than likely fall down. I just finished my first long walk in many months and was wobbling all over the terrain.
At night, before going to sleep, when I remove my speech processor, I still hear noises, funny sounds and an occasional word. Come mid-April, my 81 year-old ears will have heard their very last word in this life. After that, my implants will do all the translating of the noises of sound. At night, when I go to sleep without them, I will be totally deaf, having experienced one of the little deaths that many suffer through their lives.
Reading about people like Sara Mearns and many other famous people who have battled serious hearing loss and even deafness, such as Beethoven, Helen Keller, Thomas Edison, the totally deaf actress Marlee Matlin, actor Rob Lowe, actress, Jodie Foster and singer Eric Clapton, underscores the fact that the invisible handicap is no respecter of fame or fortune.
I would be remiss if I did not suggest the best way I have found to deal with all the isolation, frustrations and misunderstandings. God has blessed me with a very weird sense of humor. It can strike at any moment, any place and without warning. A few days ago, I was buying my daily newspapers when the lady behind the counter told me to take my BOA card out of the machine. It sounded more like Take your shirt off! When I shared this with her, she burst into loud laughter.
This story reminded me of a fellow named Geoffrey. I have known him mostly from our membership in the Annunziata Church Men’s Bible study in St. Louis. Though we are on the opposite sides of the political spectrum, we both have been educated mostly in Jesuit schools. He was at St. Louis University Prep while I was attending Xavier in New York City. We both hold doctorates in History from St. Louis University.
Geoffrey was holding court at the parish dinner party with a number of female parishioners. I was not privy to the whole conversation but I thought he had said: I tell jokes. I laughed out loud because I never took him for a humorist. What he had actually said had something to do with Father Issac Jogues, the Jesuit missionary, who was martyred in Canada in the 17th century.
This made me think of an old blog essay, entitled Have a Happy Pencil. My late wife and I were at a baseball game, on the eve of my birthday. Amid the crowd noise, I thought she said something that sounded like Have a Happy Pencil. Not even close! She had said that she had seen her friend Kathy Kingsley at the grocery store earlier that day.
Think about this. It is as good a greeting as the perfunctory: Have a nice day! When passing a friend or even a stranger on the street, just wish them to: Have a Happy Pencil and see what they say. The public might just be ready for a new salutation. Who knows it might even start a new trend.
My hearing malaprop must have really inspired me because I wrote several hundred words on pencils for my blog. I uncovered some really interesting things. I had heard about a man who was a pencil sharpener. That’s what he did for a living. His name was David Rees and they called him The Proust of Pencils because he had a book out, entitled How to Sharpen Your Pencils. (Not one to believe in gadgets, my father used to use a pen knife.)
I ended my Happy Pencil essay with the words, those who believe in God but cannot hear much suffer the loss of a verbal connection with the Almighty. I remember what it was like 12 years ago, when like the ballerina I had my top of the line hearing aids. I was overwhelmed with the Word of the Lord and marveled at all the sounds in church I had missed for years. I wanted to scream Eureka because I had indeed been blessed because my hearing had been returned to me. However, their effectiveness wore off till their teaming up with my first implant four years ago.
Right now, it is likened to my history repeating itself. So it is with cautious anticipation that I look forward to early May when Doctor Jennifer Tirano turns on my second speech processor. It will make my hearing the best it can be for the rest of my days*. On that eventful day, I will wish everyone to have A Happy Pencil.
* This is my third essay about my invisible handicap journey for the CJ, which has followed Silent Sounds in 2016, followed by The Parish Lector the following year.
