Old Pony

When it’s windy, I can’t hear.

It doesn’t bother me. It’s like going home again. Being in my own head, seeing what I see, being with other people but like strangers on a train. No one expects you to talk to strangers on a train. They expect you to be in your own head, to be content with whatever is in there, to surrender the need to know what other people are saying, to not care what is going on, to decide what parts of reality matter and what is extraneous. When you are seriously hearing impaired, almost everything is extraneous.

Extraneous: irrelevant or unrelated to the subject being dealt with

It narrows the world and that isn’t always bad. Sometimes, it is a balm.

The world is loud since my cochlear implant. Sometimes screaming but usually just loud, busy, voices on top of each other, laughter from down the road, a dog barking who belongs to someone else. Sometimes I think extraneous sounds are important. Is that our dog barking? Why is our dog barking? No. It’s the neighbor’s dog barking.

When I am fully wired up, I hear a lot. And, after so many years of living in my head, what I hear is both wonderful and oppressive. It is a demanding business to be fully part of the world.

The wind today took me back to my old self. And I remembered how, after many years of struggle and self-pity, I became at home with not hearing. I loved the world as I saw it and moved myself like a chess piece from square to square unimpeded, unchecked, unnoticed. People could assume what they wanted about me; they weren’t part of the reality of my head. I lived so much of the time like a hot air balloon sailing up and over everything.

We visited the ponies today in the back paddock of the horse ranch where a friend tends to rescued horses and teaches children to ride. The ponies are old. One of them is a donkey.

There is talking going on but I’m not part of it. I marvel at the oldest pony’s white eyelashes and the wrinkles on his horse nose. Deep wrinkles like what you would see on a person, what you would see on me. I think about this while the others are talking, little pieces of their words slipping in under the wind. I think only about the old pony’s precious, soft nose and wanting to smooth his wrinkles with my hand.

__________________

The Daily Post prompt: Wind