I’ve had an epiphany lately regarding my father and some of his formerly most mysterious and annoying habits.
As I’ve written before, it’s apparent to me that my dad was on the spectrum. Of course, no one ever talked about such things back then, so when I was growing up, the family explained my father’s oddities by saying that he was hard of hearing. Of course, he never went to an audiologist or had hearing aids or any of that nonsense. My mother used to say that he’d been born with nerve damage in his ears, and that no one could do anything about it. I’m virtually certain that she made up that story to explain the inexplicable, since she made up a lot of stories, and she believed them, too.
My father’s hearing issues were very aggravating to me as a kid, because every single time I said something, the very first thing out of his mouth was, “What?” Every single time. It was a reflex. It didn’t matter how loudly or how softly I spoke, or what else was happening in the room. He’d always say, “What?” When I had the patience, I’d repeat myself, in exactly the same tone of voice, and then he’d hear me. When I’d get exasperated with him and say, “Why aren’t you paying attention to me the first time?” his response would always be the same: “You’re mumbling.”
And that response would send me into the stratosphere, because I Did Not Mumble. No one else in the entire world ever said I mumbled. I knew that I was enunciating the English language perfectly well, and I still get an adrenaline rush just thinking about my father telling me otherwise. He knew how much it bothered me because, after awhile, he took on a new annoying habit: when he couldn’t hear me, he’d say “You’re mumbling,” and he’d laugh. And then I’d say, “I am not mumbling. You are not hearing me.” But it never made a difference. It was always “What?” and “You’re mumbling.” By the time I left home, it had nearly driven me up the wall and back.
For several years afterward, I continued to buy the idea that my father was hard of hearing. Then, one day, when my parents were visiting in California, everything changed. We were all in the car; my father was driving, and I was in the back seat. There was lots of ambient noise: highway noise, the sound of the car wheels running over the pavement, and everything else you hear in a car going 65 miles per hour on a six-lane freeway. Nonetheless, I said something to my father. I can’t even remember what it was, because I figured he wouldn’t hear it anyway. But, miracle of miracles, he heard me. The first time. Without saying “What?” or “You’re mumbling.” He just heard me, like a regular person, and he just answered me, like a regular person.
I suppose I should have felt angry, as though he’d been playing some sort of weird game all those years, but I wasn’t. I intuitively knew that he really had heard me clearly at that moment, and that he hadn’t been able to hear me before. I became fascinated by the contradiction, but I really didn’t know how to explain it.
These days, though, it makes perfect sense to me. After all, when I go out into the world, I often block my hearing—with earplugs, a Peltor headset, or both. Today, I’ve been able to wear just my earplugs, and hear people as though they’re at a distance, and say a few words in order to get my errands done. But tomorrow, when I go to my Voc Rehab appointment, I will have to wear the headset in order to block out ambient noise and allow myself to concentrate. In other words, I render myself more or less able to hear as needed.
I’m now realizing that my father must have had the same amount of auditory sensitivity and processing difficulty that I have, and that he intuitively came up with a survival strategy. Somehow, he selectively rendered himself deaf. It’s as though he just shut down his attention and literally couldn’t hear, and his saying “What?” was his signal to bring his attention back up. This strategy also provided him with a way to cushion himself against having to hear everything loud and clear the first time, and thus avoid becoming overloaded by it. It really was quite a brilliant strategy, and I’m in awe that he was able to pull it off. As for me—I simply cannot let my auditory attention wane. It’s always on alert, unless I block my ears. Then, even if I can hear somewhat, the person talking feels further away and the sound of his or her voice doesn’t penetrate my nervous system with anything like the same intensity. Somehow, my father was able to give himself the same experience without having to explain why he was wearing a lawnmower headset to go shopping.
My father is now gone, and even if he were still alive, he would not for a moment accept anything that I’m saying. He wouldn’t accept that we were both on the spectrum, he wouldn’t accept that we both had extraordinary sensory sensitivity, and he wouldn’t accept that I couldn’t overcome all of it by sheer force of will. In fact, he’d laugh me right out of the room for even broaching the subject.
So I’m just left with a new understanding of my dad, and it makes me feel closer to him. It consoles me to understand him better now.
© 2010 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg
