Grandma Henke

I sound like an old bag pipe tonight every time I breathe out.  Some nights I can sleep through the wheeze, and other nights, like this one, my own breathing wakes me up.   Once I’m awake it’s Lynn’s snoring that keeps me awake.   It’s a conspiracy is what it is.   During the day I spend half my time saying, “What did you say?  …Could you repeat that?” … because I can’t hear what’s being said.    We sit down to watch NCIS and I have to continually turn it louder or softer because they talk so soft  but the cars and other things are so loud … and then the darned commercials are even louder.

I remember my mother telling me I listened to my music too loud and would ruin my ears.    I can’t imagine that is really what caused this to happen.  I mean how loud can you get with a small transistor radio anyway?    And the music I listened to was like a lullaby compared to the noises put out by the rock bands of today.

I think the decibels put out by my children when they were little must have reached the maximum level five or six times a day; like whenever they were hungry, wet, tired, or bored … or somebody looked at them.   So it isn’t fair to blame it on The Beach Boys, Elvis, or the Beatles of the sixties.

Old ears are significantly different than young ears.   My ears used to take in a TV show, a conversation on the phone, and be able to monitor all five children even if they were in five different rooms of the house.    Now if I am on the phone and someone else in the room asks me what time it is my mind goes blank and I don’t know who to listen to.   If I am sitting fairly close to the television and the grandchildren are arguing in the next room I don’t know what they are saying on the TV.

I thought I was losing my mind instead of my hearing but I happened on a special on TV late last night when my wheezing woke me up and Lynn was snoring.    It said the brain is the culprit.    As our brain ages we lose the ability to multi task.    We try to focus on one thing and everything going on around us distracts us and we can’t concentrate.   Besides that, they’ve gone and thrown so many more things at us to be distracted by …just when we’ve reached the age we can’t multi task so well.  There are noises all over the house now days even if you are home alone.   The dishes are in the kitchen getting washed, the clothes are in the dryer getting dried, the vacuum is in one room doing its job, the television is on in the background and you are supposed to be able to hear what someone is saying on the telephone?     No wonder old people need hearing aids.

We have an old and a young congregation at Church.   You can tell by the signs.   We have babies crying and hearing aids whistling all at the same time.      Don’t you just love it when somebody’s hearing aid is whistling and they can’t hear it so their partner is trying to quietly tell them to turn their hearing aid down … and they speak right out loud back and say, “What?   I can’t hear a darned thing you’re saying?”   That will probably be me in a few years and I hope I still think it’s funny then.

So if I’m so darned hard of hearing during the day how come I hear every little sound at night?    I can hear if water drips, if there is an insect buzzing, if the wind is blowing … I hear it all … at night.    It really is a conspiracy.