Do you hear what I hear?

Last week I went for a hearing test. My doctor had told me some time ago that my right eardrum was very scarred (probably from childhood ear infections), and I'd always had trouble hearing out of it. This winter, after a particularly bad cold, my hearing in that ear suddenly deteriorated.

The test showed that my right ear is not, in fact, working well at all: the eardrum did not move as it should in response to the sounds produced by the machine. However, the technician said that the hearing in my left ear is exceptionally good: "like a five-year-old," she said.

As I left the appointment I was not so much discouraged by my poor right ear as elated that my "five-year-old" left ear is working so well. I imagined how much I would miss in life if I couldn't hear: particularly music.

In her memoir Heart Matters, Adrienne Clarkson says that she adopted as her personal motto these words from an Anglican collect: "May only the truth be spoken; may only the truth be heard." For that last part, one needs good ears! Even only one good one might do.