“The poison oak leaves are already turning orange” I say. My feet landing on the trail feeling the weight of Jack and the osprey carrier. Today was Jacks turn to go on a hike with Billy and me. I let Jack walk down the hill, past the lavender and what I call cattails because of their soft ends, but I think are a type of flax. He walked along the edge of the curb until he got to branches growing out into the street. He stops to examine them, Billy is sniffing all along, and I’m engaging my most patient self. I keep Jack in the carrier on the trail still, the smell of dog poop permeates my nostrils and the thought of Jack tasting it runs through my mind. My legs work hard to get us up that first hill, step over the fallen tree, and climb up the old wooden steps. I’m bringing Jack into my special place, the walk I’ve taken almost religiously for the past eight years. I can still feel my quads wet inside my rain suit, water dripping in my eyes, black dog hair sticking to my hands and the smell of dog piss, from the first week after my mom died all those years ago. Billy, Zappa, and I would be up on the trail early in the morning. It was a wet and stormy winter. I would wear my mom’s raincoat to be close to her. It smelt like her house, musty, eventually needing to be thrown away. The moss on the trees was bright green and the creek ran fast. The tears on my cheeks ran just as fast, my eyes puffy and swollen, my world changed forever. Never imagining then I would be here today hiking with my little boy. I tell Jack all about the bark on the trees, how the moss is brown but will turn green, and that someday, when he’s bigger I’ll teach him how to hike on this trail without getting poison oak. My memories of today merging with my memories of the past.
Month: July 2015
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Last night in the nursery, after Jack and Fiona had their baths, Jack did the most amazing thing. It was time to put pajamas on, I wanted to put Fiona’s on first because she had begun to tug at her diapers. She wasn’t wearing her hearing aids. “Fiona, bring me your pajamas” I said. She looked at me and started walking towards the pajamas but didn’t understand what I wanted. I pointed and said it again but it was clear she didn’t understand. Then, Jack picked up Fiona’s pajama’s and handed them to her so she could bring them to me. I couldn’t believe it, and I knew at that moment, more than at any other moment Jack would be there for his sister forever.
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We had fun today! It’s been the perfect day and the babies are taking an afternoon nap. Today was the last day of summer school. In the fall Fiona will be old enough to go all three days and Jack gets to go with her. It’s really difficult to tell how far behind Fiona is in language development. I’ve never really thought of Fiona as having a learning disability, it seems like it’s just as hard for all babies to learn things at this age. But it looks like, at least for the next several years her hearing loss is a learning disability. She needs extra care when it comes to communication, especially teaching her to say what she wants, needs, and feels. It’s impossible to tell if she is slower than Jack on certain things because of her hearing loss or because she’s just different. We just have to wait and see.
When Fiona was first born she didn’t pass the hearing screening done in the hospital. The nurse told us, but said she thought it was a mistake, that the machine had been acting funny. Over the next four days while we were in the hospital they tested her a few more times, each time getting the same result. I wasn’t upset, I don’t know why. Maybe because we had been trying to have a baby for so long and here we were with two beautiful babies. I didn’t really know what it meant. I’ve never known anyone very well with a hearing loss. I worked with children with other kinds of disabilities, autism and mobility issues, but never deafness or hearing loss. The hardest part in the beginning was the reaction of everyone else. The way people would say, “She seems normal, I can’t believe she can’t hear.” Or “I think she heard that, are you sure she can’t hear?” I would have to explain again and again the facts, I still do. People always ask, “Will it get better?” Like it’s a sickness she will overcome.
I had appointment after appointment the first several months. Three hour long audiology appointments where I had to hold Fiona still on my lap with electrodes attached to her head to measure brain activity. One day we had to go to a genetics doctor. It was in an old San Francisco building at the corner of Geary and Divisadero. Fiona was only seven weeks old, still asleep as we met Dr. Elison. He asks us a bunch of questions, we tell him “no, there is no known deafness in our family tree, and no known infections in utero.” The genetics doctor says we can do a blood test to see if she’s positive for connexin 26/30. This test rules out syndromic deafness. I can’t even see how they could find a vein in her little arm. I decided at that point no more tests. We were done.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 