So to my surprise, and, I suppose, in a way, gratitude, I am growing older. This is not an anticipated eventuality, as I was always the youngest one: in my class at Bryn Mawr, in my building in New York, in Bikram's yoga class, till he started promoting himself and hitting on students... you get the idea. It came as a shock then when I was contacted by my audiologist, I think he's called, to have a hearing test. Deafness has never been true anathema to me, as my sweetest most lovable relative was my Grandma Gussie, with whom I lived for my five first years, because my father, whose family was rich, particularly for Pittsburgh Jews, loved nothing better than everybody else doing everything, and did not share with my mother till after their wedding party in the basement of her family, his intention. As she told it to me, he said, as they left their mating celebration, "Why don't we just go upstairs?" and moved in. My mother, not yet having embraced the fury that was to characterize her being, just behind the wit that also developed, stunned, acceded. Three years later I was born, and so it was that my crib was assembled just inside the doors that led out onto the sort-of balconied front porch, while at the other end of the hall my mother's several brothers, sisters and parents had to wait every morning outside the only bathroom while Lew W. Davis, as my grandpa Moisch always called him, a slice of wry with his observation, slowly maximized every moment of his bathing and shaving, impeccable as well as inconsiderate.
When Lew appeared to be going to work he would hide out just up the street in Grandpa's fruit and vegetable store so my mother wouldn't know he didn't have a real job, as he sold pharmaceuticals for Bauer and Black, and that you could do without going into an office as I don't think he actually had one. He ate Indian nuts there until it was time to go home, shelling the little things and throwing the casings on the floor. My grandma, in on the secret, and, as already noted, the sweetest person in the world, swept everything up and said nothing.
So because I loved her so, her being hard of hearing didn't seem that odious to me. As few of the people I've known were captivating with every word they spoke, missing a thought now and then didn't seem dire. Being tested then, coming up with the numbers far below what they should have been, I quickly acceded to getting a hearing aid, as I know this is a transition time in my life, grateful at having come this far, past where I always assumed I would be over. Also I have made a penny or two, and there is insurance, so the price of my new appendage did not weigh in to my cognition. It took a few days after I had ordered the aid, tried it on, saw how primitively, obviously, even obtrusively it sat on, behind, and in front of my ear, or rather ears, that it even sank in how much I was paying. $7200. The price, once I thought about it, of a small used car. Or maybe a new one if I knew the right dealer.
Thus I have spent the better part of this weekend day pulling my thoughts, my phone, my ears and my soul together, arranging to return the things, just say "Huh?" and/or be with people who don't mind repeating, delighting in the happy fact that we are all still here. Or if they are lucky enough to be cute and younger, that they will be privileged to have my run, if they do, or if anyone can with what is going on politically. I am still going to have to pay $300 to return the aids, plus postage. I suppose with how things are and what is going on in the world, I am lucky have become conscious before it was too late, and I had to go everywhere with what the dealer told me, surprised I wanted to return them, was "the Rolls Royce of Hearing Aids." That might have mollified me if there was somebody fabulous standing by the curb.
