Letters from Greece: Thoughts from the end of the third week

Dear friends,

After a day of writing, swimming, eating and the occasional nap, we dress for dinner. The women in elegant dresses, large stone rings and dangling bracelets. The men — unlike mating birds — are more subdued in white shirts and long pants. Mariel lights votive candles around the veranda walls, miniature kerosene lamps light the tables.  At one point there were 11 of us, now we are down to six, and with our hosts, Mariel and Phillip, it’s still a noisy eight.

I am ambivalent about dinner time. Look forward to the conviviality after the day spent mostly alone, and yet dread the conversations that will rush at me like the sea that pounds the shore below.

 I wear two hearing aids. They are extremely useful and work well when there is one person or even two or three, as long as they are close by. In the center of a group of animated story tellers, I am lost in the rush of words, a happy rumble I cannot decipher.

In our new mix there are three writers from Britain. A new challenge. There seems to be something about British accents my hearing aids refuse to translate into American speech. Perhaps it is the speed with which they speak, or the tightness of the speech patterns, or the rhythm, but I find I lose most of what is being said. 

Not succeeding in following the conversation that elicits such laughter, I find myself trying not to disappear into my head, hoping my facial expression is one showing the interest I feel and not an unfelt arrogance.

I know that the thing I want to do is to simply admit I have a hearing problem. Please, I shall say, if I seem to drift away from your story, it is not boredom. You see, I cannot hear well.

 I did this with the first group here. And then the second. Now I have to do it again, and feel reluctant. Don’t want to be “the poor old lady.” They already know I often need help or am unstable: graciously they have helped me into the water from the rocky beach, seen my awkward yoga pose and the slowness of pace going up and down stairs or along the rocky paths. They already know the worst: two phony hips, one almost blind eye — and now to admit to two hearing aids! Feels for a moment like being totally decrepit. Ah! Vanity. You linger for too long. Into the sea I toss you.

The best way to say anything is straight out.

Sorry if I often ask you to “please say that again. I have a hearing problem.” Heads nod in understanding. There is not even a break in the conversation.

I am now in a world of joyful conviviality. Voices weave together, words lap and overlap; when I want to hear something I have missed — I shall ask. Simple.

On the last day of the week, we all go to the neighborhood taverna. Mariel pre-orders the food to be shared: platters of fresh tomatoes with olives and onions, the yogurt flavored with spices, large fish with its head, mashed spiced lentils, calamari with many tentacles, fried sardines to be eaten bones and all. Red and white wine in small red and purple metal pitchers, and the finale: a platter of fresh and candied fruit.

On both sides of me, my fellow writers spoke clearly, loudly and above the din. Delight!

I, we the older ones, must accept our limitations, with no shame. The secret is not only to accept, but to find new ways to do what we love, to ask for temporary help, and sometimes, to say simply, “I can no longer do that.” 

In each new encounter false pride must give way to clear explanation.

Sometimes, when the response verges on condescension, a simple, “Thank you, I can handle that one myself,” works well.

I love to tease, to joke and when I miss the jokes of others I feel deep disappointment. Hearing the sudden outburst of genuine laughter, I have to remind myself that though I have not heard, I am in the group, and let the laughter envelope me. 

And there are even the many times when I can tell my stories, in my American accent, with my malapropisms from mis-hearing others, and I am the one making them laugh. 

Letters from Greece: Thoughts from the end of the third week was first published in The Lakeville Journal Company newspapers, TriCorner News.