"I have been hearing-impaired since birth but it wasn’t until more recently that I have finally acknowledged I am Hard of Hearing and not simply Molly who happens to have trouble hearing. I have bluffed my way through more conversations than I can possibly count. The number of times I have asked for something to be repeated is likely approaching the number of stars in the sky. I have dominated conversations for as long as I can remember. And, when I can’t control the conversation or the setting, I retreat into myself.
I remember the first time I saw my hard-of-hearing 90-year-old grandfather get lost inside himself at a family get-together. The pain I felt as I recognized his behavior and the look on his face as those I have displayed my entire life ran indescribably deep. No matter how much I’ve wanted to hide the truth my whole life, my hearing impairment has led to countless misunderstandings, consistent struggles and numerous damaged relationships. That is the painful truth.
Years ago, I came to the realization that my hearing loss was invisible. I had always wanted it to be so. But, as I got older and settings like those at work, family events and outings with friends got increasingly dynamic and varied, I realized the very same invisibility I had often been grateful for was in fact a burden. As a young kid who was desperate to fit in and be normal, I used to often privately thank the gods I hadn’t been dealt a disability that had left me disfigured. Very few people have stopped and stared at my hearing aid—particularly when my hair has covered it or when, during my junior high school years, I chose not to wear it all. I could ignore the problem as much as I wanted and make excuses for my hearing impairment as much as I wanted. People wouldn’t judge me at first glance. And, when they did judge me, I thought it was because of my merits, not my disability. That was how I coped for 27 years.
Now, everything has changed. The day I returned to work after marrying my soulmate and enjoying an amazing honeymoon in Napa and San Francisco, I was laid off from my television production job. Four months after being dealt this professional blow, I tore my ACL on the slopes of Mammoth Mountain. Down on my luck and as physically limited as my elderly grandparents, I had a lot of time on my hands to reevaluate my future. I have always had a highly analytical personality. It had always gotten me far.
My plan from the time I was a pre-teen was to become a professional journalist, a loving wife and mother, a daughter my parents would always be proud of and an upstanding member of my community. At 25, I was a loving wife and daughter with a career in shambles and a body that was temporarily shut down. I decided during those months of recovery that I wanted to help others like me. I wanted to become an audiologist. The decision was a really personal one. Growing up I didn’t have any peers who were hard-of-hearing. Like everyone else, I had always considering hearing loss a disorder exclusive to adults and the elderly.
My parents and I had been told at age 5 that I had hearing loss and that it was due to a precipitous birth. I had the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck on the afternoon of Monday, October 10th, 1983. My mother’s obstetrician used forceps to deliver me shortly after 5pm. I looked like E.T. in my parents' prized first photo of me, snapped in the delivery room. That didn’t matter to Amy and Dale. I was their first-born--and, ultimately, their only child-- I was perfect. Molly Caitlin Millbauer was one of the most loved babies this world has seen.
Shortly after birth, I developed a hematoma on the right side of my head as a result of my risky delivery. My mom lovingly referred to me as her “broken child” because the hematoma left me unable to lift my head. As it shrank, my neck grew stronger. Finally, eight months into life, I was no longer broken--my head was firmly planted upright on my little frame.
By one and a half, my once jet-black head of hair had turned white blond and curly. The color of my hair set off my blue eyes. I looked like a cherub. Toddling around in my childhood home, I was slow to speak and a little quiet. But, I almost always had a smile on my face and I loved and was loved by my family.
My speech finally came as the years went by—it came predominantly in the form of Spanish. My mom returned to work four days a week as an office manager for an Infectious Disease Specialist three months after I was born. My dad worked full-time as a Real Estate Consultant. I had several caretakers but by age 2, I was being cared for by my Spanish-speaking nanny Consuelo. Cony is from El Salvador. She had left her young son and daughter behind in El Salvador in the care of her mother, while she went to work in Los Angeles with the goal of providing for her family. Cony found a surrogate daughter in me. Before long, I was holding conversations in Spanish with her. My favorite past-time was following her while she cleaned the house pushing my Fisher-Price vacuum cleaner along the way, yelling “¡Limpia! ¡Limpia!” at the top of my lungs.
I preferred Spanish and my mom who was herself nearly fluent because of her lifelong love of Romantic languages (she had taken years of Spanish and Italian in high school and college) indulged me. After all, the ability to speak in two or more languages is a huge asset in this increasingly small world. As I began school, though, it became apparent that my English language abilities were delayed. I had trouble with pronunciation. A “sharp” was my name for Jaws and his other fellow scary beasts of the sea. I ate raisins with reckless abandon and would refuse to call them anything other than my name for them--“Eeries.” My teachers began to encourage my mother to speak English in the home to help me progress linguistically. So, that is what she did. Spanish was used less and less and slowly, my English skills improved.
It wasn’t until I had all but lost my Spanish skills, that my hearing loss was finally revealed. To this day, I am an English-only speaker with very limited understanding of the Spanish language. In fact, I struggled immensely in high school Spanish. A big part of my poor grades in these Spanish classes: accented speakers were slowly becoming harder and harder for me to comprehend."
More to come soon....
i'm so glad that you are writing this. i just learned a few things =) keep it going!
ReplyDelete