To be sung in a Julie Andrews voice a la Sound of Music!

“Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start

When you read you begin with A B C

When you hear you begin with

Tip Tap Tea

Sit Sat Sea…..”

Yeah, I know, I know – why the hell am I bringing up Doh A Deer with very strange words? Laugh! Let me explain…..

Now that I am beginning to hear with my left ear I am having to do exercises. Exercises that are “easy-peasy” to you hearing folk. But damn difficult for me. Mum is being a super-star and a very hard task master!

Firstly I  take off my “good ear” so that it is me and the “reincarnated” ear that tackle what lies ahead! Mum then reads the words: coot, kit, caught, cot, cart, cut, and I have to repeat them all after her, looking at the words as she says them. Then the difficult part starts. I am not allowed to look at the words OR at her! Just listen to the word she says and then repeat it to her. Yep, as I said, “easy-peasy” for you hearing folk but it’s a different case for me. It is bloody difficult!

Horde, had, heed, head, hid, hard.

Sound is vibrations that travel through the air and can be heard when they reach a person or animal’s ear. I can hear sound now but at the moment my brain is struggling to interpret it. So I might make a mistake between ‘head’ and ‘hid’!

Laugh –   It drives me stark raving mad!!!

The post Me and Julie Andrews! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.

A friend of mine, Lisa Perry, was driving me home from the shops. I had just bought a load of groceries and was feeling very satisfied and content. She turned the corner and that was when we saw it.

The rainbow.

It was this full arc of a rainbow that went from one end of the sky to the other. It seemed unbelievably close. It seemed to be no further away than about a hundred metres.

“Lisa….Lisa…,”I said in a low, almost guttural sounding voice, “pull over, pull over and stop the car. Please.”

She did so. I stared. I had seen many rainbows before. I had seen their colours: pink, orange, mauve, blue…..I had seen them countless times. But never, ever as I saw them in that typically South African early evening light.

That rainbow had huge bands of colour that positively seemed to spin you towards them. Rich, deep, mesmerising. I sat in the car and I thought: Gaynor, you must remember this rainbow. Don’t you ever dare forget it!

And remember it I have.

So often I find myself coming back from the shops, laden with bags, and cursing the fact that I am now unable to drive. Suddenly I stop and put down my shopping. I recall the magic I encountered that evening.

I remember.

I remember that I am still able to see the laughter in my Mother’s eyes, a child’s first steps, my beautiful niece in her matric dance dress, a sky clustered full of stars, a field teeming with daffodils. I am able to see the unearthly beauty of something like rainbows.

I can see rainbows.

I pick up my bags and continue on my way with a smile in my heart.

I can see rainbows!

The post Eye See! appeared first on 'ear 'ear! by Gaynor Young.