Anna’s Story

When the audiologist at Anna’s one month appointment swept her hand underneath the audiogram, she seemed to be sweeping away all the sounds I’ve ever loved–leaves falling, birds chirping, voices talking, a lawn mower mowing. Anna’s hearing loss felt like a loss from which I would never recover. But then, the audiologist asked if I wanted to know about cochlear implants. I had never heard of them, and I was so overwhelmed I almost said no. She rolled her stool towards me and showed me how they worked–the internal coil stimulating all the follicles under Anna’s cochlea, “like a rolled up piano key,” she told me. This prospect of giving Anna the gift of music, which is so central to our family life, is what made me pay close attention to what the audiologist was telling me. Our profoundly deaf daughter might actually be able to hear.

My husband and I struggled with this decision. We loved Anna unconditionally. We didn’t want to change the gift that she was, the way her sense of humor had nothing to do with a sense of hearing. The way she lit up like any baby to the sight of her sister, to our distinctive smiles. And yet, I, as a writer, and my husband, as a long-time tenor at our church, felt that sound was another tool we had used to organize the details of the world, and that music was an irreplaceable entity that gave extra meaning and beauty to our lives. We could honor her deafness, while also giving her the tools we had come equipped with, from birth.

At that point, I called Nancy Caleffe-Schenck, who worked at the Listen Foundation at the time. She explained how Auditory-Verbal Therapy would work: I would explain everything we were doing in words. Before that, I would give Anna the Ling Sounds–the building blocks for speech. And even before that, I would show her that sound had a source. Basically, I would be Anna’s constant narrator. I could do this; as a writer, narrating is what I have always done. To do it for my daughter would be even more rewarding than doing it on the page.

So, due to the generosity of the Listen Foundation, we started AVT with Nancy when Anna was three months old and wearing her tiny rose gold hearing aids. I loved to arrive at the Listen Foundation for her appointments. We met other similar parents in their carpeted lobby, and I could hear Nancy’s enthusiasm through her closed door. It felt that our child was loved and noticed and extra special because of the way she was. When Anna received her cochlear implants at ten months old, we knew that it was right for us. We had a team, and we made the decision entirely out of love.

When Nancy retired, we worked with Joanna Stith, whose patience and amazement with Anna reformed the way I mothered both of my daughters. She understood graduality in a way I didn’t with my older, typically developing child. We were on Anna’s timeline and continue to be today. Anna grew so beautifully into her sense of hearing, and I credit that largely to the Listen Foundation and the culture of acceptance they’ve created through their devoted therapists. Today, Anna is in a mainstream classroom, she sings (on-key!) alongside her dad, and her teachers say she’s the best listener in the class. I always joke that she better be–we’ve been teaching her to listen before she could hear!

Parenting is never predictable. Anna is the best proof of this truth. She is a daily astonishment, and we wouldn’t change any chapter of her story.

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