On Listening

AirPodgate and the Missing Black Diamonds

It’s been a while since I wrote. I’ve been working on a creative thesis for my MFA and trying to expand my umwelt: taking classes in ritual magic, working with a Fae mentor. I’ve also been distracted because in the background, like a low shhhhh of white noise, I’ve been losing one of my senses.

My hearing isn’t what it used to be. (Or is it the world that’s not clear enough?) The problems began awhile ago, I think, when I was a new mom and my son was learning to sleep through the night. In the miserable toss-and-turn process of trying to rest and stay attentive, I went from being a back sleeper to a 100% side sleeper, facing away from my son’s room. I was overly vigilant about any sound, to the point of not being able to fall asleep. And when I did fall asleep, I’d wake up to the sound of the wind, my husband breathing, or the AC coming through the vents. I kept the baby monitor on low and faced away from my son’s room room in an attempt to give myself mental space.

Fast forward six years: I don’t need to keep an ear out at night anymore. If my son has a bad dream, he simply flings open the bedroom door, and bursts in to tell us about it. I remain a side sleeper and still need to distract myself to fall asleep, for which I use audio books. Not long ago, when my husband was out of town, I had the bed to myself for the first time in a while, and relished not using AirPods to listen to my audiobook. I played the book on speaker, right into the open air. I was living it up! Taking all the space in the bed! Playing my audiobook on loud! When I turned onto my favorite sleeping side, though, story got muffled. What’d that character just say? I rewound and upped the volume, listening again, and still couldn’t understand what Big Ammichi had said to her son in The Covenant of Water. Then I flipped over onto my other side and heard it just fine.

It’s several months later, and an audiologist has confirmed what I’ve been trying to deny: I have hearing loss at age thirty-six. I need a hearing aid in at least the right ear, but preferably both ears. “Did you work in the music industry?” my audiologist wants to know. No, I did not work in the music industry. No part of me is remotely musical or musically inclined and I rarely went to concerts why am I having hearing loss at thirty-six? My audiologist explains that it’s probably genetic. She shows me a treasure map-like graph of red and blue X’s connected by lines, except instead of marking gold, the X’s show the diminished levels of my hearing. There are cute icons of common sounds in different pitch categories, a bird for birdsong, a tiny excavator for the low rumble of machinery, the small face of a crying baby. This is the column were I have the most hearing loss, specifically in the ear that faced up when I was trying to sleep as a new mom. My audiologist says that cochlear cilia can atrophy with sound trauma. I don’t ask her if my cochlear cilia is possibly traumatized by motherhood, because I don’t want to sound ridiculous. And there are genetics to consider. But that, too, comes with mom trauma.

I’m still reeling from this news about my hearing, this irreversible “forever” development. My hearing will never recover, and if I want to slow the decline, stall the Horsemen of the Apocalypse gallop of my genetics, I need to adjust to bionic accessories. This was not how I imagined my umwelt expansion going. I had hoped to hear the whisper of voices from the subtle realms, not the nauseating, persistent low hum of air conditioners. Once or twice, I’ve heard disembodied voices, but I was probably picking up radio signals. Evidently, this is something hearing aids can do. I’m being plunged into new worlds of sound, but so far, it doesn’t feel wondrous or magical. The only thing that’s somewhat mystical about this whole situation is that, a year and a half ago, my AirPods started going missing.

I don’t lose things very often. I’m meticulous about the placement of my possessions, borderline obsessive compulsive (and I don’t mean that in the casual manner of pop culture). I’ve had the same pair of AirPods for many years. But a year and a half ago, when I was getting ready for a run and reached for my AirPods, in the same place I always leave them, they weren’t there. My husband hadn’t taken them, nor had my son. I looked for them in pockets, purses, and car crevices, but they couldn’t be found. I bought another pair and within a few days, those went missing too. It happened two more times, until I cried out in frustration, to no one in particular, “Stop taking my AirPods!” After that, they stopped disappearing. But one final ear accessory went missing.

Before bed one night, I changed into PJs and placed my jewelry in their usual spots: necklace laid flat on a shelf, earrings placed just so, side-by-side. I’d worn a pair of my favorites that day, studs with little black diamonds in a cluster. I went into the other room to read for a bit, do some online research on folklore and faeries. My son was asleep and my husband wasn’t home yet from a business dinner. Tired of waiting for him, I went to brush my teeth, passing the place where I’d left my jewelry, and noticed that one earring wasn’t there. The necklace and other earring were just as I’d left them, but the right earring was missing.

At the time, I wondered if Airpodgate and the missing earring were trying to tell me something, like maybe, Listen. Listen to what? I tried meditating, lighting a candle and asking, “What do you want me to hear?” I didn’t get any clear feedback. Maybe some fae creature has my things tucked under a floor board somewhere, and if so, I hope they’re enjoying the sparkle of those black diamonds. I doubt the fae dole out public service announcements about one’s health, but now I wonder if the message was, “You’re losing your hearing, dummy, especially in that right ear.” I don’t have answers to the mysteries of missing things and failing hearing, falling X’s on a sound chart. But I’m trying to get comfortable with uncertainty. To find pleasure in not knowing, and leave space for new discoveries.

“Nearby, there is some other way of being we cannot yet imagine. And that other world is near, is with us, our whole lives long, sometimes faintly audible, as if something is happening just on the other side of a very, very thin wall” (p. 221, Thin Places by Jordan Kisner)