At sixty, I bought hearing aids. The audiologist showed me a drawer of tiny moons and asked which color I wanted. I said invisible. She said gray is the new invisible.
The first day, restaurants sounded like thunder and my knees like popcorn. In the café, I learned the espresso machine yelled. My wife had been right all along, and I hadn’t realized it. I also learned I am loud.
We choreographed restaurant seating. I took the wall to focus sound. She took my hand. The waiter took our order, and I took mental notes, because consonants now travel in packs and vowels hide behind them. When I said What? twice, my wife said, That’s my handsome echo.
At home, I heard the refrigerator confess its crimes. I heard my name arrive before the room did.
The real trick, nobody tells you, is choosing. You can chase every crumb of sound and starve on it, or you can eat the sentence and guess at the paragraph. The devices help me hear, not listen. That part is still work.
Last night she laughed in the kitchen. I didn’t ask her to repeat it. I walked toward it. We met between the sink and the door, where age keeps its shoes.
Eric Goldfarb is a retired technology and private equity executive whose work appears in industry publications and literary journals. He writes essays on family, healthcare, travel, and the quiet reinventions that shape a life. He is at work on a book of essays. He lives with his wife in Atlanta, Georgia.
Image Credit: Flickr Creative Commons/Ian “Harry” Harris
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