TARA HARDY FOR THE GLOBE AND MAIL
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Some months ago, as usual, I attended the weekly Sacred Circle Dance group at a nearby church.
At the end of the various dances, 16 of us stood in a circle holding hands. We had turned out the lights and were silent in the dusk, thinking about fellowship and whether it had stopped raining outside, when the woman opposite me let out a soft sound I could not quite make out.
Was it a grunt? A word? I didn't know, not having much hearing in one ear and even less in the other.
Then there was another noise, and yet another, apparently coming from other members of the group. The noises were getting closer. I had a horrid feeling that I would be expected to do something in my turn, but what?
The man beside me let out a noise and then squeezed my hand. It was my turn to do something. I gave a soft grunt, but after a pause the man squeezed my hand again. My grunt wasn't acceptable, obviously.
"I can't hear!" I finally blurted out.
There was silence, and then the sounds continued around the circle. How embarrassing.
As I drove a friend home a few minutes later, I asked her what the other people had been saying.
"Oh," she remarked loudly (thank goodness), "they were saying a word that they felt needed saying. I had planned to say 'peace' or 'joy,' but other women said them first so I made do with 'harmony.'"
She didn't seem to have noticed that I'd had a problem.
I laughed to myself, thinking of a memoir I had read by a deaf young woman who had taught herself to lip read. She managed so splendidly at her university with her courses and with the other students, who didn't know she was deaf, that she was asked to join a sorority.
She was delighted to join. The only problem came when the inductees were led into the dark basement of the sorority house for the final ceremony that would make them sisters for life.
By candlelight, the women seated themselves on benches around a large table holding hands. When they were settled, the leader, who was seated across from the memoir author, whispered into the ear of the inductee on her right the secret words of the sorority, passed down each year from older generations of worthy sorority members. Then each woman whispered the magical words to the person on her right.
The author was in a tizzy. She wouldn't be able to lip read the words of her neighbour as the important message was conveyed. What to do?
She felt her neighbour lean toward her, breathing into her ear. After a pause, perhaps accepted as a form of reverence, she turned to the next woman and made up a noble sentiment to whisper to her, something like, "All life is a struggle so never give in."
She worried afterward that half of her friends had misinformation about their new group. What if the required sentiment had been, "All life is a struggle so go with the flow?" Would half the sorority sisters inducted in her year behave differently from all their sisters in the past, and all those in the future?
And I thought back to some years before, when I had been driving a friend around the countryside to help her find a dog to buy. I was glancing at the green fields, admiring the view as we cruised along, when by chance I glanced at my friend and saw to my horror that she was telling me some story. She had apparently been talking away happily, but I hadn't heard a word.
This upset me enough that I finally went to an audiologist and bought two hearing aids.
But even with hearing aids, I have trouble. When I go birdwatching most Sundays with another friend, I seldom hear the birds singing because I am wearing a hat. In winter I need one to keep out the cold, and in summer to protect me from the rays of the sun. For some reason any head gear angers the hearing aids, which buzz so loudly that it irritates my friend, and maybe even the birds for all I know.
In daily life I can hear most people as they talk, but not those who whisper, and they become more numerous year after year. People get sick of me saying "Pardon?" or "I didn't hear you," or "Could you repeat that please?"
I now have a rule that if I explain that I can't hear very well and a person continues to talk in a voice so low that their words are incomprehensible, I just pretend to hear and nod and smile as seems appropriate.
There is a bit of a panic if their voice rises as they ask a question, but this actually happens less often than one would think. I'm sure I am missing out sometimes on important information, but maybe that's not all my fault.
Anne Innis Dagg lives in Waterloo, Ont.