Writing in July
Edith Cook
Miss Edith
(Dr. Edith Cook)
Published July 8, 2024. Editor’s Headline: “In Search of Sound”
Have you ever tried to find a tiny tool like a hearing aid on a gravel path as the sun sets? Recently our neighbors tried to find RonLee’s device. RonLee has been my companion since we met in Saratoga, Wyoming.
We’ve been vacationing near a Nebraska lake for Independence Day, using his travel trailer. His older children, like mine, have adult children of their own, while the youngest and his wife have a girl of eight.
RonLee lost his wife three years ago. Leukemia, doctors warned years earlier, it was bound to take her life. When it happened, the surviving spouse was at a loss on how to keep going, as tends to happen with the long-married.
RonLee’s two sons and spouses are here with their boats and RVs. In the early evening we get together for barbeques. The younger of the two maintains a commercial fishing business; the older loves to fish from his pontoon. Yesterday he took us on a spin around the lake after dinner. The water was calm, and water-sports traffic had died down. I was happy to be on the water again. My late husband and I owned a boat during our boys’ growing-up years as they went from being pulled on innertubes to waterskies to wakeboards.
RonLee’s two daughters and their spouses live further east. We visited them last time we were in Nebraska. They weren’t exactly overjoyed to see their dad in the company of a woman other than the mother whose memory they revere.
My friend wears hearing aids, as I do. They run on batteries while mine recharges at night. Further, his is a version where the left functions only when the right one is in place.
One late afternoon his right aid went missing, which meant the left was useless. Most oldsters, to hear their own voices, speak way too loudly when left without hearing aids. RonLee is no exception. “Don’t scream,” I murmured while he was telling me something.
“I saw you earlier wearing only the left,” said his son. We knew then, the device wasn’t misplaced; RonLee must have lost it somewhere between his own and his son’s setup. We began searching the walk between and around the two trailers, where stately trees—ash, locus, cottonwood—line the road, and birds of all kinds twitter, chirp, and coo. Neighbors joined us until night came on, at which we called off the search.
The next morning, holding our coffee mugs and glancing out the window, we saw our neighbors picking up where we left off the night before. We stepped out to join them.
“I downloaded an app for the search,” said the neighbor.
“We might use your phone, too,” added his wife. “It connects your aids via WiFi.”
RonLee handed her his iPhone. We went back to our breakfast.
While the road in front of the trailers is covered with gravel and front lawns grow trees, a lawn stretches in back for a couple of acres, down to a row of trees near a creek that feeds the lake. Some years ago, RonLee’s youngest took on a volunteer project of mowing the entire field with his riding mower.
After a quick bowl of cereal, we again joined our neighbors, surprised to see them on the back lawn, headed toward a tree. “That’s where I picked mulberries with my granddaughter,” RonLee told me. “I cannot imagine why they think I dropped the hearing aid there.”
Yet near the mulberry tree the neighbors hollered a triumphant cry. They had found RonLee’s missing device!
“I saw you yesterday with your head in the tree branches,” the neighbor explained. “Last night after dark it occurred to me, that’s where a branch could’ve knocked off your aid without your noticing.”
“My granddaughter and I were picking and eating mulberries,” said RonLee somewhat sheepishly.
“We heard the beeping from your aid in the grass,” said the neighbor’s wife. “Your battery held the charge overnight. You’re lucky.”
“You are our heroes,” I said later that day, as we treated them to bottles of beer along with crackers and cheese.
They grinned at us. “Just bein’ neighborly,” they said, “like your son.” RonLee had become the recipient of neighborly goodwill.
On the downside, all of us picked up chiggers from walking in the grass. It made us scratch like crazy—until someone suggested painting nail polish on the tiny bumps.