A late afternoon lap around a silent house

The screen door clangs shut behind me. I shuffle down the front steps carefully as my sandals lightly plod on each step. Bees busily buzz away in the smelly unidentified bush beside the porch. (Jasmine?) A car edges its way into the court and the tyres grip the road with a whirr as it completes its u-turn. The driver’s window is down and a radio advertisement escapes. (Actually, scratch that. It’s a loud offensive drumbeat of some sort.) Some twigs crunch beneath its wheels as it drives away.

The noisy silence

Over the last three years, I’ve come to treasure sounds. Most sounds. Not bagpipes. Don’t miss them, sorry. ;-) But I have tried to embrace all other sounds, even the badly distorted ones. No surprises there.

Since the silence following CI surgery? Sure. There are (temporarily) fewer sounds to treasure (told you about the cupboard slamming, right?). But I’ve started to discover some new sounds. That I can even reproduce. And I’m learning that the sounds I ‘treasure’ are, well, just Plain Annoying to my hearing family and friends. ;-)

Take these scenarios …

(Temporary) silence is thy friend

Yesterday I discovered that if I slammed one particular cupboard door, I could hear it! I then felt compelled to slam it again. So, armed with a stupid grin on my face, I did just that. Several times in a row. Then I tried some other cupboards. Nope. Nothing. So why that one? Turns out I’m hearing it slam against some misaligned coffee mugs, so the sound is higher pitched. I probably have no coffee cup handles left. But it‘s been fun. :-)

Every one of my visitors has asked me how I’m coping with the silence and it is, after all, a potential deal-breaker for people thinking of getting two ears implanted in the same operation, so I’ve decided to report on how it’s going.