The Sound You Stop Noticing You're Missing

My mother had the television a little louder than I remembered. Not loud. Just a notch past where I would have set it. We were sitting in her kitchen, and I asked her something — I don’t even remember what — and she said, “What?”

So I said it again.

And she said, “What, honey?”

By the third time, I had turned my whole body toward her and slowed down every word, and she finally heard me, and we both laughed about it and moved on. The way you do. The way you’ve probably done a hundred times with someone you love, or had done to you.

But it stayed with me. Because it wasn’t the first time. It had been happening for a while, in small ways. The volume creeping up. The “what” that came more often. The way she’d answer a slightly different question than the one I’d asked — confidently, warmly, completely off.

I started asking her to get her hearing checked. Gently at first, then less gently. She brushed it off every time. I hear fine. You mumble. The acoustics in here are terrible. And honestly, …