Submitted by Rosemary Poetzel
as she waited for her implant surgery

Ear in Training - My Life as an Ear
(Thoughts Before the Surgery)

My cochlear implant surgery will be May 15, a month away. I read the poetry of Stanley Kunitz, America's Poet Laureate:

I can scarely wait 'til tomorrow
when a new life begins for me
As it does each day
As it does each day

So many simmering questions, so much detailed information. Sorting out muted feelings and talking to my family. Half are rooting for me, half are hanging back, what is this craziness?

For me the decision for a cochlear implant was simple. The pause until it happens isn't. I realize that I need to do something, to run or walk while I am waiting or I'll end up hiding. The exercise occupies me mile after mile, I'm pacing with my mind and my body.

Since I was a pre-school child I had been told that the hearing loss was nerve deafness, nothing could be done. So I came to accept that and live a good gentle life. Childhood, teen and adult years of keeping up, never understanding the context or inflections of word meanings, merged into accommodations and super efforts to be equal and/or normal. Now at age fifty-five I cling to the known, the commonplace, the make-dos that have compensated, for fifty years. I perform music with the 20% of hearing that I had been given, and I do it well. The simple song makes me feel whole, un-handicapped, and I teach with the quiet joy of a child.

Suddenly the possibility of a life change throws me on my ear. Am I too old for this? I do not know what is coming, and I grit my heart. Tennyson once wrote in "Ulysses".....

Though much is taken, much abides.
And though we are not now that strength
which in olden days moved Earth and Heaven,
That which we are, we are.

One equal temper of heroic hearts
Made weak by time and fate,
But strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Old age only comes upon us when dreams are replaced with regrets. The Past is Prologue. I take this day and hug it to myself; to pursue not just merely my dreams but also the things that I never ever dreamed of.

I sense no more than that I have an appointment with the present, a rendezvous with life.

Rosie Poetzel
April 15, 2002