We all have earwax. According to Ancestry.com, it is not really “wax.” The buildup in our ears is a combination of dead skin cells, hair, oil, sweat, and other secretions. Depending on our genetics some of us have wet earwax, while others have dry. This blog post contains thought beyond a basic science lesson in genetics, I promise.
Early in my childhood, my doctor discovered that I suffer from almost complete hearing loss in my right ear. More noticeable to my parents, I suffered from endless ear infections. A multitude of visits to a specialist that my parents could not afford led my parents to the belief that the hearing loss and ear infections resulted from excessive buildup of wax in my ear. The diagnosis holds merit in that earwax can disrupt hearing and cause water to remain in one’s ear, thus resulting in an ear infection.
In my adult life, through the help of a specialist that I could afford, I found out that earwax plays no role in my hearing loss. The shape of my ear canal, which I was born with, is the reason I cannot hear sounds beyond a basic pitch. All adults lose their abilities to hear higher pitch sounds over time, I just got a head start, and experience this to a greater extreme. At times, folks are wrecked by some high pitch noise due to a malfunctioning AC unit, alarm, etc., while I cannot hear the sound at all.
Over the years, I tried different hearing devices, and I found that I am adjusted to the way God made me, and the devices bring about all sorts of noises that hinder me more than help me. Luckily, the human voice is 100% within the range of sounds that I can hear, so the one thing I care about hearing, I can hear without aid. That said, it helps me tremendously when folks talk at a volume just higher than a normal speaking voice, and I am habitually loud when talking.
Looking back on my childhood, my mother held the belief that earwax caused my hearing loss. The family spent a great deal of money to reach this diagnosis, without any sort of solution. To further the disbelief of the problem, I rarely spoke as a child. The word autism is a word I heard often. I took much longer to learn things than my siblings, and the fact that I rarely spoke, made it difficult to figure out what I did and did not know. Sitting next to a sandy haired kid name Jared in first grade, and a second-grade teacher that identified my own unique skills and positioned me for success kept me out of special education.
I flew under the radar the rest of my elementary school years, muddled through middle school, and survived a couple of years of high school. I even managed to graduate from college with a business degree. To think shyness and a misshaped ear canal almost impeded me from all of this. Yet, I do not feel that my hearing loss is something I had to overcome. I suppose that I felt behind the eightball in music class and band, but someone has to sit in the last chair of the clarinet section.
After about a year of trying to force me to learn music, Mom gave up and that clarinet became my sister’s curse. I went off to art class with my best friend Chris. I am almost as bad at all forms of drawing, sculpting and painting as I am music. Our art teacher held some sort of doctorate in education. She did not care what we produced in art class as long as we did something with our creative minds. The world needs more of her in our classrooms. Chris and I spent our time in art class writing poetry. Ironically, Chris spent a great deal of time in our later years converting the poetry into songs.
I never felt embarrassed by my inadequacy in hearing. I did feel deep embarrassment about my earwax. Seriously, I carried this into my adult years. When I took myself to the hearing doctor, I did not go to resolve a hearing problem, I went to talk about my earwax. Mom would often yell at me when I got something wrong, and I got stuff wrong all of the time. She would suggest that my ears were full of wax and threaten to take me to the doctor to clean out my ears. This gave me a deep, burning sense of embarrassment.
Looking back on specific times I recall her aggravation and threatening to clean out my ears, never once did I not hear her. “Do your math homework and laundry. Don’t eat junk food after school.” I heard all of this every day. I made disastrous grades in algebra and geometry class not because I could not hear my mom telling me to do my homework, but because in abstraction, math made no sense to me. I did not do my laundry because I preferred to play outside. I ate cookies after school because they were yummy.
As an adult, I relish in leveraging my math skills for concrete purposes, and I find folding laundry to be therapeutic. I grew out of my love for cookies, and I more or less maintain a healthy weight. All of this happened without correcting my earwax problem, and I no longer feel embarrassed about earwax.
Reflecting on this today, I appreciate that we all have earwax both literally in our ears and figuratively in that we all feel embarrassment over things we cannot help and should not feel embarrassed about. I also appreciate now that I should have shared with my mother that her words and threats about my earwax caused me deep embarrassment. She never meant to hurt me with her words. I suspect her aggravation stemmed from the financial strain of bills from the specialist that did not help me in any way. If I could go back, I would express my feelings to her, and I know she would have helped me through my embarrassment instead of perpetuating it.
Let us all let go of our embarrassment of figurative earwax and find ways to express ourselves and share our feelings to better our hearts, minds, and lives.
Postscript – Dear Chris, I miss you, my friend. I hope that you are still writing poetry in music in Heaven. Love you always.