Seeing What I Was Missing

Considering the amount of medical procedures and tests I’ve had performed over the past year; both recommended and self-initiated, you’d think I might have thought of it myself. This in turn got me thinking. Recently, PinF befriended a regular reader whom he had noticed had been visiting my world for some time now, mind you she never left many clues. She would just read her fill and then after vicariously participating in my many mundane or habitual routines, move on. Eventually she did leave me a message, solving for me what had become a kind of mystery—who was this person in Kennesaw, Georgia, ever so faithfully—albeit silently, reading the PinF?

As with all mysteries, I would come to find out that there was much more to this reader than words alone could convey. Or maybe I should say it is because of reading that this mystery conveyed that which we all too often take for granted, which leads me to my point. My new found friend and her husband, proud parents to two nice and interesting teen-age children are deaf. Mind you, I didn’t ask her about it, so I’m not sure if this is a life-long affliction or something that happened early on in their lives. What I do know is this; she wrote me to tell me how much she enjoyed PinF, and how she had been following Sophia’s musical progress. She then recommended a neat site about reading and then in a casual kind of way, mentioned that she and her husband are both deaf, and they had each recently been fitted with Cochlear ear implants, now allowing them to hear sounds.

The reason I know this was because she was listening to Sophia’s songs on her MySpace page, and though she could hear the gist of the music, she asked if I might send her the lyrics so she could truly understand all that Sophie was singing. How neat was this? I started thinking about this afterwards, wondering how much she might have missed of her own children’s songs and cries, and as happy as I was, I also felt a bit sad. Then I began to think how much we all take for granted that which makes our lives richer and ultimately, more enjoyable—our senses. I again thought about how often people who are deprived of sight or sound are often more attuned in other areas, as if they hone other senses to a higher degree due to their deficiency. Whether it be lip reading and sign language or having being more aware of nuances by way of sight or smell to make up for they cannot hear. Or as is often the case, the blind, the way they too seem to often “see” things the sighted cannot, and have much more developed sense of hearing. So it was that I began reading my new friends blog, recently reading this piece that her daughter had to write for a school project incorporating a famous quote, in this case Shakespeare. I found this quite touching, not to mention very mature of her daughter to use her parent’s as inspiration for her school assignment.

I kind of got sidetracked, but in a good way. I started out mentioning medical procedures, because I’m having another one tomorrow on something that I had taken for granted far too long. Never having had a problem, I never felt compelled to get a check up. Then again, I wasn’t having any heart problems either before discovering my awful numbers. Still, I noticed I’ve been finding it difficult to read smaller print, specifically when I was asked to read the number on the side of my prescription bottle….uh oh. So tomorrow I’m off again in search of better health, this time its ocular health. So there you have it, my deaf friend made me notice my senses, which in turn brought me to my "senses" and prompted me to make an appointment to get my eyes checked.

Sophia has already given me a list of “non-cool” frames and lenses to be avoided in the event that I do in fact need glasses. Thank God for me her fashionable "senses" are razor sharp.