To my son:
I was in the bathroom when I thought about the surgeon cutting into your head. I washed my hands, holding back tears, and splashed water on my face.
I told your mom I was fine. Even when I took you, just seven months old, and placed you in a small hospital bed. Even when I tried to soothe you with a pink elephant teether, a Valentine’s Day present from your gramma. Even when I stepped into the hallway and watched two anesthesiologists wheel you around a corner and out of sight.
Even when a nurse gave your mom a box of tissues and closed the door.
I forgot all that. Forgot you had an IV in your arm and a breathing tube down your throat. Forgot doctors would make small cuts behind each ear and insert a device to help you hear.
It was 7 a.m., and you’d already been awake for hours. We’d usually put you down for a nap by now. Instead, we let you watch the movie “Coco” because we felt bad. Bad you didn’t know what was coming. Bad we were keeping you up just to give you away.
I forgot all that. Until I was wheeling the stroller around without you.
For almost eight hours, your mom and I waited in a room by ourselves. I brought a notebook to write to you. I thought it would take my mind off things. But when we got to the hospital, I couldn’t find it.
I pulled peanut butter crackers and headphones and blankets out of our backpack, trying not to throw them across the room. When I found the notebook, my pen didn’t work.
I slammed it down and carved inkless scratches you could see for 20 pages.
“I just wanted to write some things down to distract myself,” I eventually wrote. “Instead, I got an alert on my phone that says you’re in surgery.”
…
On Father’s Day last year, my dad gave me a journal. “Love from the bump,” it said on the front. “Not long till I’ll be keeping you up all night.”
My first entry was about feeling you move inside your mom’s belly. It felt like one of those cartoons where someone's heart literally jumps out of their chest.
“I fell in love last night,” I wrote.
Another entry was from the day we went to the hospital. And 11 days after you were born, I wrote this: “We’re tired. We’re always tired.”
Looking through the notebook, which I plan to give you one day, I realize I wrote about crying in five of six letters.
“I don’t cry because I’m sad,” I wrote. “I cry because I’m happy. I cry because I love you.”
When my editor asked if I would write a Father’s Day essay, I didn’t know what I wanted to say. You were my first child. What do I know about being a father?
I know it’s impossible to prepare for the lack of sleep, even though it’s the one thing everyone told us about. I know I don’t watch much TV anymore. I know laundry is borderline impossible to finish, and I don’t cut the grass until 8 p.m. I know you’re all I talk about.
Otherwise, I don’t think fatherhood has changed me. Or maybe I just haven’t realized how yet.
My editor told me I didn't have to write about what we’re going through if I didn't want to. She just wanted to know how fatherhood felt, and if I’ve learned anything. She didn't say the word “deaf,” but it hovered over our conversation.
It made me realize I haven’t written that word yet, either. I don’t know why. Maybe I’m in denial. It took your mom and I at least a month to say it out loud. It’s your reality, though, and now I get upset when people won’t say it.
Before your surgery for cochlear implants, devices that send electronic signals to the brain to provide access to sound, your mom’s insurance company denied the procedure three times. The last time, as we waited for a response, we thought our only other option was to appeal. If that happened, my job would be to write the letter.
When I heard your mom on the phone, I walked downstairs. She was holding back tears. I knew what that meant.
I soon had at least 15 tabs open on my computer, looking for research supporting our position that you needed surgery as soon as possible. I opened a word document and took notes. A few minutes later, I started writing.
“My son is deaf,” I began. “He is also happy and wonderful and smiles all the time – especially when I stick my tongue out, or when I eat his belly.”
I explained your situation, severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss, getting angrier with each paragraph I typed. I started crying. And for all the crying I’ve done, this was the first time I had cried about your hearing. It hadn’t bothered me until now, because I always believed everything would be OK.
Now, I faced the real possibility it might not.
“Without implants, he will never develop speech, or understand it,” I wrote to the insurance company. “This is what your outdated policy is doing to my son – and every other deaf child in this country. You are depriving him of his best chance to live a life with no limits.”
I wrote one more sentence, one I would delete later:
“I hate you.”
…
Insurance eventually paid for surgery, and the day you began hearing was a blur.
We got to the hospital early, because we came straight from another doctor's appointment. Your grandparents scared us in the parking lot, banging on the car window while we ate chicken nuggets. It was your nap time, and you weren’t sleeping.
We checked in on the third floor, where the receptionist told us what to do like we hadn’t been here dozens of times. In a large room, I held you and waited. Your grandparents took videos on their phones. The audiologist turned up your equipment, little by little, until you could hear.
I missed your first reaction, but I heard you cry. It was a different kind of cry. The kind of cry where your lips pucker and your face scrunches up. The kind of cry from hearing something you’d never heard before.
As you cried, everyone in the room clapped. Your mom touched her head to yours, and she cried, too.
At some point, your mom asked me what this story was going to be about. I told her this wasn’t a story about deafness, it was a story about fatherhood. But for me, those stories are so intertwined I don’t know how to tell one without telling the other.
As we sat by a fire in our backyard and cried, she asked me how I was going to write it. I told her I didn’t know.
I guess that’s what this story is about. Because fatherhood is doubt. And sometimes fatherhood is not knowing. Fatherhood is accepting a messy yard isn’t the end of the world. Fatherhood is realizing I let work define me more than it should. Fatherhood is giving life lessons while wiping your butt.
Fatherhood is figuring it out as you go. And then changing when nothing seems to work anymore.
For some, fatherhood is golf. Because golf is a break, and even the best dads need breaks. After I played this weekend, a man wearing a tan visor sat down at a table near me. Above his right ear was a cochlear implant. I didn’t say anything, although I thought about it.
I just smiled as he leaned over, and the person next to him whispered in his ear.
…
Happy hearing birthday, son.
I put your implants on upside down this morning. I think that’s why they call it a hearing birthday: to remind us this isn’t going to be easy.
It’s been four days since your cochlear implants were turned on, and you’re downstairs screaming. Screaming that happy squeal you make when you’re tired. Your mom hasn’t gotten any work done since you woke up. She moved to the couch, because you kept slapping her computer when she was on the ground with you.
These are the kinds of things you did before you had implants; before the hospital sent us home with two giant backpacks full of equipment and two stuffed koalas; before we watched the video of you crying over and over again; before I began thinking about the first vinyl record I would play you – and you would hear.
Before all that, you were just you. And you still are.
I thought I was going to write you on surgery day. I couldn’t. I thought I would write to you that evening. I couldn’t. But I want you to know how proud I am of you.
It’s been almost a week now, and the incisions behind your ears are healing. The surgeon was so pleased with them he gave us pictures afterward.
Your mom said handing you off before the procedure hurt more than she thought it would. She said the same thing about your recovery. When we saw you after surgery, I remember the screaming. Not from you, but from other kids in other beds beside you.
You were asleep, pink elephant by your feet.
We were told recovery would be easy. And for the most part, it was. But it hasn’t felt easy to us. Books are the only thing that seem to keep you happy, and I just ordered another one.
It’s about overcoming your fears.
We want you to be confident, because your mom and I haven’t always been. We want you to know it’s OK to just be you: a brave boy with the best smile and cutest laugh; a curious boy who loves stealing glasses; a happy boy who puts anything and everything in his mouth; a deaf boy who can hear.
Love,
Dad
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