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Hearing
by Tina del Rosario

Paragraph numbers added for class purposes.

(1) The outer rims of the ears are often compared to the lip of a shell, delicately-ridged and
curved, a series of miniature crests and valleys specifically designed to house sound, which is
transmitted through a series of vibrations. It is nothing more than frail thrumming – yet this
we recognize, feel, like music, like the familiarity of voices, the rushing of water.

(2) I imagine that the first thing we hear, six months into our inception, is life itself: the gentle
swelling of water and the roar of silence in such a vacuum, the myriad tremors that cause
our small world, within another’s world, to tremble. Elemental, our ears awaken us to life and
life receives us through our ears: with the first gentle swat on the body, we scream and wail
and come to know ourselves.

(3) Mom used to sing to me from the time she found out she was pregnant, the same song, over
and over again. Edelweiss, edelweiss, every morning you greet me, she crooned, in the office while
poring over reports, at home, while waiting for my father. Small and white, clean and bright; you
look happy to meet me. She continued to sing this to me after my birth, and years afterwards,
because it was the only way I could fall asleep. I don’t remember when she stopped. One of
the stories she tells me is that late one night, as she was climbing the stairs, she heard me
singing to myself in the darkness of the room I shared with others. This made her cry, the
way she tells me the story, because I was showing her that I had heard her perfectly.

(4) I grew up with my mother’s lullabies and other sounds, my ears attuned to various things:
Dad telling me stories about Kap the Kapre and Pitoy, the sound of car horns signaling the
arrival of either my mom or my dad just before dinner, Mom singing old songs, piano keys
being played arbitrarily or skillfully, the wails that meant my brother and sister were fighting
once again, music from Les Miserables booming out as my siblings and I waved a red cloth
and played “Do You Hear the People Sing,” Dad saying HANDS! and the harsh slapping of
rubber slippers against palms, requests for water or cookies, everything. There was no time
when vibrations did not signal the presence of my family and other people, the walls of my
home.

(5) I first learned of the ocean months before our first trip to the beach, when I was all but
four years old. Coming home from a trip to the province, Mom and Dad handed each of us
decorative shells. They were violet, mottled with black, white and grey. Their edges were
scalloped; everything was whittled down to a picture of the sun setting over the ocean that
felt cold against our cheeks. They told us to hold the shells to our ears, placing delicate rim
against delicate rim, curvature against curvature, and we heard it: the ocean. A slight roaring
that did not escalate or diminish: it was just always there. The ocean I heard did not move,
but without seeing it, I knew of it, picturing fishes and boats and waves, like the pictures I
saw in books.

(6) But, when we first set foot on the beach in Cebu, my brother clutched at our mother,
struggling in her arms, while yelling that the boats would run over him. The boats were
moving, sometimes closer, sometimes farther – it varied with the ebb and flow of the waves,
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and I heard it, a roaring that evolved, interspersed as it was with the voices of my family, the
sound of boats and fishermen shouting to each other, moving in waves. The sound of the
ocean was many things, but, most of all, it pointed to something that was moving, teeming
with life.

(7) Tonight, the music from my endlessly-looped playlist wars with dialogue between two
women on the TV screen and the humming of the electric fan plugged into the corner of
my apartment. Silence is a difficult thing to get used to; it is the most disconcerting thing
about living alone. The metallic click of the key in the lock, the groaning of the hinges as I
opened the door – all these echoed throughout the rooms of my apartment, and even
outside, in the hallway. I could tell, from the sound that the elevator made, which floor it was
on; I heard, from the other end of the building, a baby crying. Late at night, no vibrations:
silence.

(8) Perhaps this, the first awareness of silence, was also why everything began to seem bigger,
more real to me. One midnight, insistent knocking on a door a few feet down sent me
scurrying into the bedroom, door locked, afraid that someone was trying to force his way
inside my apartment. I once dreamt that my sister died, and, crying, rushed to the room in
which she slept. She looked dead; I bent down and lowered my head near hers, felt the
movement of breath against my cheek, heard the sound it made as it swirled past her lips
and teeth. Still scared, I put two fingers on her exposed wrist, and felt her pulse; I heard her
heart beating.

(9) I ask to hear: I hold his face in my hands and ask him to tell me he loves me, sometimes
playfully, sometimes seriously. I love you nga! When before, Mom calling every night annoyed
me to no end, now, I pick up the phone on the first ring, hoping it is her. Hi Momma, you’re
calling agaaaain! Late one night, sitting on the stairs of my apartment building, I asked to hear
the question five times, before leaning forward and kissing him. Voices raised in anger are
preferable now: I would rather see mouths open, feel the weight of their emotion through
the clenched hands that still movement, hear yelling that echoes in my ears, makes my face
flush red, than nothing at all. Silence is painful.

(10) A year or two ago, I felt a sudden, sharp pain in my ear. I screwed my face up in pain,
cupping my hand to it and waiting cautiously. I thought it was nothing, just a momentary
twinge, but another came along and the shelter of my cupped hand echoed a shuffling, a
scuffling. An insect had found its way through the curves and trapped itself in the canal.
Dad said it hurt because it was scratching or biting at my eardrum, trying to get out – and we
had to get it out, had to help it out...

(11) This was what they did: I tilted my head to the side, clenching my hands because the pains
were getting more frequent as it did its best to find a way out, and they poured organic oil in
my ear. I felt the viscous fluid falling into the space, at first, drop by drop, and then a thick,
steady stream. It was silent again, except for the weakening struggles of the insect, and I
heard it, heard the water ripple slightly, densely, again and again, and I imagined minute
waves emanating from the flailing limbs and antennae of the insect, rippling through the
fluid to tap at my eardrum. And then, all of a sudden, silence.