Judy Alter's Blog, page 325

The wrong shoes, short pants and a lovely day

Long day, short blog. This morning, Palm Sunday, one of the high holy days of Christianity, I went to church in tennis shoes. Mind you, I didn't mean to--when I dressed I thought I looked rather nice: black top with my squash blossom necklace, cream slacks, and I planned to wear black shoes. Then Jacob and I got into the long pants/short pants discussion (heated, with much talk about casting blame on others) and I ended up at church still wearing my tennis shoes, Jacob in short pants with his long pants stuffed in my purse to hand over to his mother for the birthday party after church. Wondered if I should have made a sign that said, "I just had foot surgery." But it would have been fudging--I've been wearing other shoes. Probably no one noticed but me--and Jordan when I pointed it out. I took Jacob, in his short pants, into the sanctuary because the children were processing with palms and singing a song about the little gray donkey--presumably the one Jesus rode into Jerusalem. He liked that but soon after his dad had to take him to the day-care class. He's not ready for a whole church service yet.
Tonight, twelve of us for barbecue, potato salad, beans, and assorted appetizers--such fun to have all my neighbors on the porch, laughing and enjoying. They all talk at once, with the result that I don't hear much of what is said. But I sit back, sip my wine, and enjoy the camaraderie. I really watched what I ate but even so ate  more than I meant to: split a barbecue sandwich with Susan, potato salad, no beans, too much chip and dip, and a delicious Spanish cheese that Cathy from down the street brought. We were a group ranging in age from thirty to me, the senior citizen, plus five-, four- and one-year olds. Jacob was the five and the two from next door were the younger ones. Grayson is so ready to walk but just can't quite do it--adorable.
Late in the evenng, Sue, Jay and Susan, and Brannon (next door to the east) lingered, and I got to visit. Jordan had done much of the clean-up--I may never give a party without her. And Susan cleared the table. I had the house back in reasonable shape by 9:30--and I sent people home with all that food I shouldn't eat. Kept just a bit of potato salad!
What more could one ask than family, friends, and good food plus a lovely evening to be on the peorch. Last year it went suddenly from being too cold to being too hot for the porch, but so far this year we've had several good porch evenings. I love it. God is good.

The power of power

This morning I woke to that absolute quiet that only a house without electricity has. None of the noises that you aren't aware of until you don't hear them--the hum of the refrigerator, the slight roar of the hot water heater, the happy sound of the alarm system clicking off. Theere's something stagnant about a house without power. It was also a dull, cloudy morning. I took care of the dogs--in and out twice for Sophie who couldn't make up her mind--and went back to bed. But I thought about all the things I could do without power--make potato salad, yoga, read the paper, check email on my phone which was forutnately charged. My big worry was the crockpot of barbecue I'd been letting cook all night--and one of the things I missed when I woke was the smell of it. Turns out the power had only been out about ten minutes--I checked with neighbors. Then it was all over the neighborhood e-mail "Buzz" about what happened: at least one car had struck the utility pole at a major intersection a block away. One story said two cars were racing--at 7:15 in the morning? Please!
I survived, cutting up celery, onion, and potatoes (pre-cooked thank goodness--I learned this trick about cooking them ahead so they're easy to peel, although some recipes call for warm potatoes to soak up the dressing). Made the dressing and dumped it all in--it's been my diet downfall the rest of the day. I love potato salad and this particular recipe--you can find it online if you search for County Line Potato Salad. I timed my trips to the refrigerator carefully--getting everything I needed at one time so I didn't open and shut a lot. Made tuna for my lunch. Opened the refrigerator and shoved everything in, including the bbq which had cooled to warm by now. Just then the power came on--The first clue was not lights but sounds--a beep from my computer, the printer waking itself up. At the same time the sun came out. I decided thanks was due to God and Oncor, more much more to the former.
I took the bbq back out of the fridge, cooked it some more, did my yoga, read the paper, and was ready to collapse. But I still had to shred the cooked meat, cook down the liquid from the crockpot and add the saved-back sauce. Got it all done and took a  long nap.
Tonight Jacob is as tired as I am. He had a baseball game followed by a b'day party. I picked up a sweaty, dirty little boy who refuses to take a shower--we'll revisit that in the morning. He turned down a trip to one of his favorite restaurants in favor of chicken nuggets and TV and is now, about 8:30, eating a peanut butter-and-honey sandwich. We'll both be early to bed tonight.

Ah, domesticity!

Sometimes I get in the mood for a domestic day--and today was it. Trips to two grocery stores this morning, although of course I already have a list of what I didn't get, and cooking tonight. For a while I was out of the cooking mood, but I'm back in it.
Guess the grocery store wore me out because I came too close for comfort to sleeping past time to get Jacob. Came awake with a start--I'd turned off the alarm twenty minutes earlier--and flew into cotton knit pants and a T-shirt, the outfit Jacob calls my "jammies." I asked him if he was embarrassed, and he said yes. Thank  you, Jacob. No one else seemed to notice. Nor did they notice that I was almost stumbling because I'd been so sound asleep--one of those dreams where you're two layers down into dreams. Fortunately he was far from the last child left on the playground.
Nice surprise for him: Meredith, my next-door neighbor, took Jacob and her two (Abby, four, and Grayson, one) to ride the park train--brave girl. I told Jacob to mind Meredith, which I knew he would, but forgot to tell him to watch out for Abby. No need. Meredith said at the first bridge, he threw his arm across her and said, "I have to hold on to you just in case." Obviously, Abby thinks he's a hero, as shown in this picture.


Jacob and his daddy had supper with me on the porch--that pork roast bits I wrote about in Potluck with Judy (http://potluckwithjudy.blogspot.com/2012/03/boiled-porkoh-come-on-now-with-black.html). The salad was special--first greens from my gutter garden. Jacob, predictably, did not like the meat. But Christian and I lingered over wine on the porch and had a nice visit while Jacob captured roly-polys and created a home for them in an ice cream cup.
It was late when I started to fix bbq--but it's all cooking merrily away in the crockpot now. After going to all the trouble to make the sauce--and it is a bit of trouble--I nearly forgot to turn the crockpot on. It was plugged in, wasn't it? What more does it need? Potatoes are cooked, and tomorrow I'll finish up the bbq and make potato salad--all for neighbor Jay's b'day dinner Sunday night. I am so glad to be back in a cooking mood.
Monday I'm fixing a strange chicken salad for Elizabeth--we're going to work on her memoir. But since she's gluten free I thought to just fix a big tossed salad with a vinaigrette--until I found this on Pinterest: chicken, lime juice, salt, cilantro, and garlic. Think I'll add some scallions, since I have them in my garden. Or maybe serve the scallions separately, with salt to dip them in. I remember that from my childhood. So good when they're fresh out of the ground--or, in this case, the gutter.
And then it's on to Easter dinner--the $8,000 leg of lamb with a gratin of potatoes, onions, and tomatoes. But more about that later.
I'm taking a vacation from writing--and from my conscience. Such fun!

My green world and other thoughts

In the spring my porch feels lik a tree house, surrounded by all the lovely light green of new leaves. I often take a book and a glass of wine out there but forget the book in enjoying the surroundings--except for the occasional noisy car that goes way too fast down our street. This weekend I'll make my annual purchase of fountain grass for a large pot in on corner of the porch and sweet potato vines to replace the pansies. I have one pot that doesn't get sun and have to figure out what to do with it, but the herbs are doing well. Oregano, left on its own, will take over. Today I transplanted the basil a friend brought me some time ago from the greenhouse window to a larger pot on the porch. And my chives, still growing from a plant purchased years ago, are flourishing. Wondering what other herbs I want.
Today was a productive day. I've been saying all along that the fourth Kelly O'Connell Mystery will be out in 2013 but is not written, barely imagined, and has no title. The managing editor at Turquoise Morning Press reminded me I had to submit a proposal--or at least a synopsis--so I could get a slot and a contract. Went back to my notes, and oh joy! Found two different plot lines using the device I knew the book would center around. One sounded much better to me, and I wrote a 750-word proposal and got it off to my editor.
Then Christian and I had a brief email exchange about marketing the books to realtors, since Kelly O'Connell is a realtor. He said hed been talking to an agent friend about that, and maybe a news release. so I wrote a release directed at realtors. May do some blatant promotion along that line on Facebook. Cleaned odds and ends off my desk and am ready to get back to the chili book. I feel like I'm always "getting back" to the chili book.
I got to thinking about pleasure reading. It used to be that if a mystery grabbed me, I could read it in two days. Now it takes me two weeks, beause so much else seems to distract me. Yes, writing--but Facebook, Pinterest, cooking magazines, dogs, children, friends. I am so fortunate.
Jacob and I did home work, as we do almost every afternoon. The line that rings in my ears: "Juju, you don't understand." Right, Jacob, I don't understand kindergarten home work--do you?

This business of writing

Don't know that I have my thoughts organized on this, but I've been thinking about it for quite some time. I follow several writers' listservs. A theme on many is that you have to treat your writing as a business. Yet, I'm amazed at some writers, particularly those who manage their on backlist as ebooks and those who publish independently. Amazed, awed, but stymied. They track sales daily, they compare their sales to comparable books, they experiment with different digital prices--free, ninety-nine cents, when to raise, when to lower. Many of them are constantly at war with diffrent e-platforms, though most often Amazon, and they agonize over writing letters of complaint, getting action in lowering, raising prices, whatever they want. Writing is indeed a business, and they micromanage it--but when do they have time to write?
A big controversy wages these days over the Kindle Select program, whereby an author can agree to post a new book digitally only on Kindle for 90 days; in return you get five days in which you can give the book away free. Some give close to 20,000--sorry but it hurts my Scottish soul to give all that away. On the other hand, give-aways boost your ranking on Amazon (something I don't pay attention to, unfortunately), and many authors report a boost in sales of all their books after the free promotion. There's also something about certain high-level Kindle patrons can "borrow" books and the author gets a small payment. I don't understand this, and from what I read it doesn't end up profiting the author. Some authors praise the KDP Select program to the high heavens, but lately more are bitterly complaining.
My new novel, No Neighborhood for Old Women, comes out as an e-book April 8, and I had at first thought to rush headlong into the Select program but now I'm undecided. My publisher, wisely, leaves the decision up to me. If whatever decision goes amuck, I have no one to blame but myself.
I appreciated a post today where the author said she isn't really very good at marketing, and she wants to stay home and write. That's one big reason I sought out a small press--and let me tell you again how happy I am with Turquoise Morning--and another reason that I am having ePub scan, prepare and post two of my older titles--Libbie and Sundance, Butch, and Me. For a small percent of royalties they will handle the business details. I can move ahead with my writing.
I do have one free short story, a short story collection, and an award-winning novel up on various platforms as e-publications that I manage. But I'm lazy or lackadaisacal about it. I don't check in on them very often. Today when I did, I was surprised to find that one platform told me I had only two items; logged in again, changed whatever, and found all three. But another time when I logged in, I found only one--Skeleton in a Dead Space. Eventually I discovered that I have two sites on Smashwords (an umbrella posting service that posts books to a variety of platforms except Kindle)--one for me, one for Turquoise Morning. That seems self-defeating--I want readers to be able to find all my books with one click. The TMP publisher is going to see about merging them, and then I'll have to deal with getting the ePub books merged into the site also.
What happened to the good old days when you wrote a book, sent it to an agent or a publisher, and went on to the next book? I recognize that in many ways a bright new world is dawning for writers with the rising acceptance of self-publishing and the growth of e-books, but the business end baffles me. I also recognize that as a retiree who appreciates the extra income but is not dependent on it, I'm in a fortunate position. But I retired because I managed a publishing business and was tired, tired, tired of spread sheets, unit costs, profit margins, and all that. I retired so I could write--and so far, it's working well. One book in 2011, two in 2012, and two scheduled for 2013. Give me publishers any day.

The mystery surrounding Etta Place

There she is--Etta Place, the mysterious and beautiful woman who was The Sundance Kid's Lover, the woman who rode and robbed banks with the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, the woman who mysteriously disappeared after the infamous shootout in Mexico that killed Sundance and, so everyone thought for a long time, Butch Cassidy. Here, she graces the cover of the reissue of my 2002 novel, soon to be available as an e-book.
No one knows where she came from, though rumor has it Sundance found her at Fannie Porters's "gentlemen's parlor" in San Antonio. I was free to make up my own version of how she got there, and I did. I also told the story of the inseparable relationship between Sundance, Butch and Etta in her voice--as I chose to interpret it. No one knows what happened to Etta after the shootout. One story is that she disappeared into South America; another that she died in a Denver hospital of appendicitis; but a third has her living and running a respectable boarding house in Fort Worth. Since I'm in Fort Worth and I once knew a man who swore he remembered being introduced to her as a very young boy, that's the story I chose to go with.
The cover to the published version of this book distressed me. It looked like a generic western, with men riding away from a train, while shooting back in that direction. Where, I asked, is Etta? One of the major points about her story and this book is that a woman rode on those train and bank robberies. The reply was that I already had an audience among women and they wanted to draw men to my book. I don't remember that it was a hugely successful strategy. I'm hoping this cover will draw women--and some men--to the novel.
Ever since the 1969 movie about them, there has been an ongoing fascination with those two outlaws. Relatives of each man have surfaced to write their own books, and there has been some solid research along with many books based on rumors.I relied on several sources, inserting fictional scenes of semi-domesticity, high living at the Brown Hotel in Denver, and close escapes One of the problems Butch and Sundance faced in their heyday was imitation--bank robberies that they didn't commit but that were blamed on them anyway. The same has proven to be true in litrature, so take this book for fiction. And read it for fun and a bit of history.
Here's what a couple of critics said about the book:
"Alter is a meticulous researcher but never at the expense of a skillful first-person narrative."—Publishers Weekly. "Judy Alter is one of the finest writers of Western fiction! Her realistic portrayal of historic events touches the imagination and stirs the spirit."—The Literary Times 
But here's the best recommendation: This is the only book I've written that made my book-loving son-in-law laugh out loud, maybe the best compliment I've ever had. Sometimes I'm quite sure he doesn't read the books I give him, but he read this--and laughed.

For what it's worth....

My thoughts on the Trayvon Martin tragedy: This morning for the first time I heard a public figure use the word that's been on my mind all week. Doris Kearns Goodwin suggested on "Meet the Press" that we should study existing vigilante laws and change them. Her reference did not deflect the conversation from the racial issue involved. Florida has something called the "Stand your ground" law, but I"m not smart enough about its  implications in this case.
I could not be more upset over the killing of a young man who was apparently well behaved and had a bright future ahead of him. Nor do I disagree that a racial issue lies at the core of this tragedy. And there's the ugly fact of profiling: did Trayvon Martin really die because he was wearing a hoodie? This senseless incident leaves no room for levity but as an Anglo woman in her seventies, I love my hoodies and wear them a lot. Am I to pack them away, or am I safe because my skin is white and the years show on my face?
The problem of vigilante justice has been with the world through the ages.In this country it goes back to witch hunts in Massachusetts and comes right on up through nineteenth-century "cowboy law" in the Old West and on into too much of the twentieth century with lynchings in the South. Men have always wanted to take justice into their own hands, rather than leave it to the law.
George Zimmerman tells us he was afraid for his life, he shot in self-defense. Yet he did not follow police phone orders to stop following the boy. What was he doing out there, alone and armed, anyway? In my neighborhood--not gated, I hasten to add--we have neighborhood patrols. These volunteers are trained by the police, and they patrol in pairs, unarmed, in cars. Their duty: call the police if they see anything suspicious.And that's their only responsibility.
That of course brings us to one of modern America's sticky wickets: the right to bear arms and the powerful NRA. I know I'll raise the hackles of a lot of my friends, but I am opposed to the right to carry arms. Just as we learn to interpret the Bible as it relates to our era, so we should interpret the Constitution. I doubt our forefathers meant for everyone to carry a Saturday night special in a pocket. If Mr. Zimmerman hadn't been armed and if he had obeyed police instructions, Trayvon Martin would no doubt be alive.
A special prosecutor will sort this out and is much more knowledgeable, both about the case and the law, than I am. But it seems clear to me that this incident is about both race and vigilantism, and we should listen to Doris Kearns Goodwin. I always thought she was one pretty smart person anyway.
This morning our minister began his sermon by saying he'd known sermons to be pitched at the last moment in favor of preaching on a current subject. He wasn't, he said, going to do that, but he talked about Trayvon Martin, how he'd agonized over the tragedy, lost sleep over it, hadn't yet sorted it out in his mind and certainly wasn't ready to preach on it. Then he preached on the day's topic, "Could you forgive Peter?" The text had of course to do with Peter's denial of Jesus, just as Jesus had predicted. As he preached about learning from mistakes and letting that learning, with grace, guide your future life, I thought whether he meant to or not, he was preaching about Trayvon Martin and, even more, George Zimmerman.
Somewhere I read that this case will do for this generation what Emmett Till's death did in the 1960s. It's a horrible way to learn a lesson.

taking out the garbage on Saturday night

This was one of those long empty Saturdays. The fact that I was taking out the garbage at 7:30 on a Saturday night tells you something about my social life. On the other hand, it was a kind of pleasant day.
My old dog, with his permanent head tilt to the left, seems occasionally to hold his head straight. Coincidentally, the terrible crick in the left side of my neck is almost gone. Sympathy? Maybe that's the best answer. I wonder, though, since it lasted a week, if it wasn't a virus. Anyway, I think both of us are better. And eating better--but then, I never stopped eating!
If you have a rambunctious dog and haven't heard of bully sticks, run, don't walk, to Google and find them. They keep the dog occupied for hours. Thanks to Patty and Ralph for bringing them to me--they've been a godsend, and I've ordered a pack. Rationing them one a day, because they aren't cheap.
Some years ago I seemed to fall a lot. Colin, my oldest, asked, "Mom, have you ever considered that it's not your balance? It's just you don't watch where you're going." I have, knock on wood, gotten over the falling--maybe I watch better. But at the time he, with all good intentions, put double-faced tape at the corners of all the rugs on my hardwood floors--most of the rugs are kilim or dhurrie and I should have thought about consequences to the rugs, but there were none. Still, don't do it! The rugs and the tape soon part company, but the tape adheres tightly to the floor. I tried Glue Gone and I don't know what else. Finally someone told me WD40. I thought I'd gotten most of it, but when the dining room rug went out for cleaning and repair this week, I found lots of tape under it. The advice I got was a light coating of WD40--hah! I soaked those tapes, then let them sit for hours. Yesterday I spent painful hands-and-knees time scrubbing up tape. One piece left and I couldn't face it, so today about noon I sprayed it; when I finally went back to it about seven-thirty tonight it came right up. Now I'm afraid to have the living room rug cleaned for fear of more tape.
Yesterday was a celebration--I am out of the post-surgical shoe and into regular shoes. The doctor said to try but it's comfortable to me, and I'm careful not to bend the questionable toe--makes getting down on your hands and knees to scrape tape a real trick, but I did it. My gait, my balance, and my self-confidence are all improved--to say nothing of my stylish look(?). But it is the season for capri pants and leggings and they'd look awful with that huge shoe sticking out. I am also doing some  yoga--seated and standing--that doesn't endanger the foot. Slightly less than two weeks,which I thinks is great.
Grocery this morning and then the day was devoted to writing a new talk to deliver at Baylor, since I found the old one on what I've learned about writing mysteries was inappropriate--especially to the title of my talk. Bless Google Alerts--one came up today publicizing the Baylor Literary Festival in April and saying I would talk about "Exploring Women in the American West." Cozy, contemporary mysteries hardly fit that, so I shelved the ten pages I'd written and started over again. It's okay, because I wasn't thrilled with them, but I'll save them and steal bits and pieces here and there--who knows, some of it may turn up in a blog. Now I actually have a new ten pages roughed out plus a couple of ideas. But I quit for the night. Going to read Avery Aames' Clobbered by Camembert. Also did some odds and ends and a bit of cooking--made a Mexican cheese ball to take to supper at neighbors' tomorrow night. Cream cheee, cheddar, pepperjack, red pepper (I hate bell pepper but used pimientos--don't tell me, I know they're cured bell peppers), cilantro, chili powder, etc. Then made tuna cakes for supper--made four, have three left over. But they were pretty good. Want either recipe? Add the name Kraft and Google them, though I substituted ingredients--like panko for Stove-Top. I'm really trying to avoid processed foods.
And, that, folks is my trivia day. Not very exciting but satisfying.

Did you ever swim in Lake Michigan?

Memoir class always gives me food for thought, and tonight was no exception. Sometimes pieces go in clusters, and tonight they were all childhood memories. One that clearly struck a note with me was written by a woman my age about her summers at a cottage on Lake Michigan. Everything rang familiar--the hot sand in summer, the icy cold waters of the lake, the suspense of the first trip to the beach to see what had washed away during the winter. All these years later, details crowd her memories, the kind of details that make an experience come alive. Oh yes, I may talk to her about avoiding passive voice and dangling modifiers, but it was a great piece. And those of us who grew up on Lake Michigan shared stories--the undertow, the polio scare and being pulled out of the water with blue lips, being taught to swim parallel to the shore.
Another piece was a woman's tribute to her father, chock full of the small moments she remembered with him--trips to the grocery store with the butcher counter in a corner and the butcher in a bloody apron, riding standing in the front of the car, the fear she had of her parents dying and then finding her dad lying on the living room floor with a nervous stomach one day, the family's belief in Pepto Bismol as a cure-all. She didn't need to tell us she adored her father and he, her--every incident shouted it out. And her opening ws funny--she was Andy Mac until she was born and turned out to be a girl. This one made me think of how different things were back then--no seat belts, no central air, no sophisticated cancer treatment in a small Texas town--when the diagnosis came it was too late.
A woman not much older that my kids told of the night she gave a farewell party for her best friend and people she didn't know came. She was horrified--and afraid--when she spotted a beer. Made me think of the parties my children gave--and some they gave when I was out of town and thought they were old enough to be trusted. They told me about them years later, and now I can laugh about it. Interestingly enough, this woman's mother is also in the class, and I am awed by the fact that they are so open with each other, though I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise. My kids are open with me, and for the most part I am with them--some things would only make them uncomfortable, and I don't share those. There's no reason.
But back to memories: everyone exclaimed over the detail in which these women remembered their childhoods, but someone suggested that once you begin to write, it all comes flooding back, and someone else said it's all there in your brain. It just has to come to the forefront.
We laugh a lot at these stories--like the little girls who thought they had eaten poison and would die any minute, so they invited their nemesis, the girl they hated to play with, to come over if she would taste their "lemonade." They figured if they were going to die, she might as well too. Of course all lived to tell the tale, and now the writer is appalled at their cruelty. We dismissed it saying children five and six don't understand the finality of death.
Another woman said she was bothered about presenting because her life hasn't been funny. I assured her it's all in the way you tell it, and that gave her an idea.
I learn so much each week from these women--and we share so much camaraderie. Have  you thought about your childhood? Tried writing about it? See what extra memories writing might bring up.

Sorry? I missed that joke.

I probably began to lose my hearing more than 15 years ago, though I was in deep denial, as most people are. Whether or not I could hear depended on several things: background noise, the voice of the speaker (some people speak softly, mumble, are "mush-mouthed," etc.) But I wasn't hearing lectures, even though I always sat in front, and I wasn't hearing in church. My brother was a particular problem, because he got mad if I didn't tell him when I didn't undertand, yet I didn't want to interrupt every two minutes.
Not being able to hear struck me as particularly unfair since I had never flown airplanes nor shot at rifle ranges and I am the last person to listen to loud music. I don't like the term idiopathic--medical speak for we don't know why it happened. But one day I found a tiny article buried in the paper indicating that women who had been given a combination of estrogen and progesterone were showing a high percentage of early hearing loss. Because I had an estrogen-driven cancer,when I was finally given estrogen, it was combined with progesterone. I asked my gynecologist if he knew about this research, and he said, "No, but I will by tonight."
A  problem most people don't realize about hearing loss: often I can hear the words, but it's like I am brain-damaged. They don't make sense to me. Other times, the most simple word can baffle me. That particularly distresses my local daughter who often gives up and my grandson who says, "Never mind."
Hearing test after hearing test showed moderate to severe loss, but it increased each time I was tested. Having your hearing tested is, in my mind, akin to being asked to read the ophthalmologist's eye chart: you feel like the bad child who hasn't done her homework because you can't do it.  About six years ago I broke down and got hearing aids--to say they are expensive is an understatement. Insurance pays sot of close to one-quarter of the cost.
Hearing aids help but they aren't a magic cure-all. They make restaurants more difficult because of background noise though you can adjust for that to some degree, and the music in church will never again sound the same. Now it has a tinny quality. The other day it seemed like the minister, a favorite of mine, was yelling at me, so I tried to turn them down but never did get a satisfactory adjustment. Besides, I now have a newer, Cadillac version--at the same high cost. Hearing aids have a life--and a warranty--of five years. These are better, I can tell, but still not perfect.
I decided to blog about this when a young woman (probably 40s but that's young to me) wrote a piece for my memoir class that combined her own diagnosis of hearing loss at 19--genetic--with that of her daughter at 13. She wrote of the feelings of denial that welled up in her, and the confusion she had felt at 19 when there was some hint of a brain tumor and yet she was never told why her mother was so upset. She wrote of her reluctance to face the fact that her daughter had the same problem and to seek help for the daughter. She read of the feelings of isolation that she felt as a young woman, and boy! did I identify! She cried in presenting the piece, and my heart went out to her. (I repeat all this only with her permission, though she remains unnamed.) She finally bought her daughter the most expensive aids she could--and bought some for herself.
But later, in conversation, she told a story about talking with a minister and a couple of friends. The friends laughed heartily, and she followed their lead--without any idea of what they were laughing about. It makes you feel dumb and isolated, an outsider. I know that feeling too. I tune out on convesations I can't hear.
So if someone seems distant, doesn't laugh at the right time or respond the right way, give them a break, make sure they heard. We try to hide our hearing aids--they aren't exactly cosmetic--but we can't always hide the deficiency.