Bugs in the Soup

When my wife and I returned to New York after a year in Ethiopia, my employer, the Ford Foundation, treated us to a full-day's physical examination. We reported to a luxurious midtown facility, donned its white robes and slippers, and spent the day visiting various testing stations. At one of them, for example, a technician tested my vision. At another, a physician examined my prostate. When my hearing was about to be tested, my wife walked by and told the audiologist, "be sure to test his hearing carefully." The audiologist smiled and said, "that's what all the wives say."

In fact the audiologist did find a slight hearing loss in the upper registers - registers, I joked to my wife, into which her voice fell - but the deficit was too small to require intervention. I was then forty. Perhaps five years later, my wife and I attended a reception at which her mother and both grandmothers were present. Both old ladies were hard of hearing, yet neither wore hearing aids. While they were engaged in an animated conversation with each other, my wife's mother turned to us and said, "neither one of them can a word the other is saying."

I joined my wife in laughing at this remark, it never occurring to me that some day I might join my wife's grandmothers in deafness. It's not that I thought that I'd be forever young, it's just that I never thought of aging at all, at least not as applied to me. Other people were old.

But little by little, I found myself turning up the volume on the radio and asking people to repeat themselves. A few years ago, I finally acquired hearing aids, which restored about 80% of my hearing. I could hear songbirds again. But this year it seemed to me that I wasn't hearing so well, although at my annual hearing exam the other day, the audiologist told me that my hearing hadn't changed. When I told him that I felt my hearing had declined, he turned up the volume of my hearing aids. In addition, he showed me that I had not been inserting the devices far enough into my ears. (I had perhaps been reacting subconsciously to my mother's admonition, which she in turn had been told by her mother, never to put anything in your ear smaller than your elbow.) "You won't hurt yourself," the audiologist assured me, "if you push it all the way in." Now I hear sounds I had forgotten existed, like the hollow plunking of computer keys when I type. Now I realize how muffled the world was, like a city under two feet of freshly fallen snow. Today, in contrast, I seem to hear every little squeak, squeal, creak, crackle, and crunch, although I still can't distinguish among certain initial consonant sounds.

The revelation that the sounds I was hearing anew had gradually been falling away made me wonder what other abilities have atrophied so slowly that I haven't notice their lessening. Perhaps it's just as well I don't know, since it's unlikely that devices or procedures exist that can restore most of the diluted abilities. True, new hips and knees can be implanted and cataracts can be removed, but, along with hearing aids, these are exceptions. Some deficits, such as the decline in muscle mass and strength, are too obvious to miss. As for the rest, I'll take my cue from the cook who said, as she pulled a bug out of the soup, "what the eye don't see, the heart don't grieve about." So I don't worry about those declines that I haven't noticed. Instead, I'm thrilled by my improved hearing, my wife is happy that she doesn't have to tell me everything twice, and my neighbors will be pleased that my hi fi is now turned to a normal volume.