Erm....What Was That Again?

For those of you who don't know, my two youngest sons are deaf. They were both born profoundly deaf, have since been implanted with bi-lateral cochlear impants and are doing wonderfully. For instance, if you didn't know, you probably would never be aware that they are deficient in any of their senses. Except maybe common sense. Sometimes.

Anyway, the point is, for the past two days my ears have been completely stopped up. I've got some sort of painful sinus thing going on. As a result, I can barely hear anything. What I do hear is muffled and incomplete and mostly nonsensical. I find myself piecing together what I think people said. I guess at a lot of it. I ignore the rest. I realize that since I can't hear most of what's going on around me, I just dismiss it. In two days I've become more in-drawn. In two days I've gotten a tiny glimpse of what my boys most likely deal with 99% of the time; though, with their implants, they probably hear better than I do right now. Even so, there's still an immense effort they put forth, I'm sure, to keep up with what is happening around them.... making sense of conversations with expert skill in piecework. I'm in awe. I don't know how they do it, day in and day out.

I take my hat off to them.