Father’s link to the world
When father was a young boy, he had one day bumped into a man who had slapped him on the side of his head. This is what my mother told me years later by way of explaining how father had been hard of hearing all my life. From this bit of information, I can imagine father must’ve been playing and running, and running without looking where he was going so that he bumped into the man, and the bump must’ve been hard enough for the man to probably think “what a naughty boy!” and to give him the slap as a result.
One of my memories of father is of him in the evenings, after his shower, cleaning his ears. I remember he was hard of hearing in both ears but one ear (probably the one on the side where the adult had slapped him) was worse that the other. But he would clean both ears as apparently, he could hear better after a good cleaning.
In the early 1980s, we managed to persuade him to consult an ENT specialist to see if anything could be done for the less damaged ear. I remember the specialist sitting in front of father, and putting one hand near one of his ears, asking “Can you hear?” as he clicked his fingers.
Even then, I found myself thinking “If my father could hear, he wouldn’t be here to consult you.” Father thought the same, but answered the stupid question and waited to hear the doctor’s suggestion.
We can operate on you …
Will it help me hear better?
We’re not sure …
Of course, father did not agree to the operation. He also refused to see another ENT specialist or do anything more about his ears. A few years later, we tried again to persuade him to do something about his increasingly bad hearing. This time, we had a recommendation to see a hearing aid specialist. This time, too, we gave father another reason why he should see this specialist – his grandson, CS. Didn’t he want to hear his grandson’s voice? That persuaded him.
The hearing aid specialist had better “bedside manners” than the ENT specialist which warmed father to him. Instead of an operation, he suggested testing father’s ears with a machine in his office. The machine measured father’s level of deafness and determined that his left ear could be fitted with a hearing aid. Measurements were taken for the earpiece. A week or so later, I went with father to try on the hearing aid. During the fitting, the telephone in the office rang. Father asked what was that noise. It turned out in the years since his hearing worsened, the standard telephone ringtone had changed and father had never heard the new ringtone before that day.
In the 20-odd years since that first hearing aid, father had gone through a few (it’s still a gadget, and like all gadgets, prone to wear and tear over time). This was the last one he used before he left us.
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He had a spare earpiece, which he would keep in the jar of “Super Dri-Aid™” to keep moisture out of the earpiece and tube.
In father’s later years, instead of cleaning his ears after his shower every evening, he would clean the earpiece he’d worn for the day, and swap it with the one in the jar to wear for the following day.
