Don’t Cry, Eat Pie

By Jessica Hoss, Nebraska H&V

I love my mom. She’s smart, she’s tough. While she might love her dog more than me–I can’t fault her for that, as Winston is pretty cute. She’s an amazing cook, but don’t go looking for ham at Christmas at Yong’s house. Her bulgogi, gim bop, and kimchi pancakes rule that particular holiday. I love to swap recipes and gardening tips with her and catch up on the latest developments with the Korean soap operas she binges on Netflix. As wonderful as our relationship is though, the one thing we can’t really talk about is my life as a mom. The fear, the anxiety, the constant second-guessing of every decision, the guilt that comes along with parenting my deaf son is something that my mom has never quite understood. It’s a club that she never had the privilege to join.

When we received the official diagnosis from the audiologist and broke the news to our families, our mothers had very different reactions. Mine went immediately into cheerleader mode. “Nathan is going to be fine. He’s going to be great because you are his mom!”  she said. Jim’s mom, Waunita, was much more sober in her response. She knew that this would be work. She knew that this would be stressful. She knew that the burden would largely be mine to carry.

You see, Waunita had experience raising a child who needed more time and attention. Jim’s sister, Cathy, was born with cerebral palsy. Her childhood was a whirlwind of doctor’s appointments, therapists, surgeries, and school meetings. The vast majority of those events were attended by Waunita on her own because my father-in-law was busy working and farming full-time to keep their family going. The first thing that Waunita did upon learning our news was to make a promise to me that she would never let me go to an appointment alone.

Fortunately, Nathan’s only diagnosis is profound hearing loss, but it hasn’t been the easiest climb to get him where he is today. A year after his implant surgeries, his speech and language weren’t progressing. I was told that he was not speaking because I was signing to him. So, I stopped signing. Months later, he still wasn’t speaking, and he was increasingly frustrated that we had robbed him of all communication. The audiologist and speech therapist kept telling us that he was in the “gray area of concern” and started hinting strongly that we should be looking at potential underlying issues.

We made the difficult decision to remove him from that facility and switched to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. We were living in northwest Iowa at the time, and this was the next closest implant center. The initial appointments were spread across two days and included meetings with an ophthalmologist, ENT, speech therapist, and audiologist. Jim was swamped at work and couldn’t take the time away, but Waunita made good on her promise and didn’t let me go alone. The first two appointments went well. His eyes checked out just fine and the ENT didn’t see any issues with the implant site. Things took a serious turn when we saw the audiologists.

Alyce and Melissa pulled up Nathan’s programming and their cheerful small talk immediately stopped. They both got very quiet and gave one another a long look before turning to face us. “We’re so sorry, his programming was so poorly done that he hasn’t been hearing anything.”

“We’ve lost an entire year?” I remember asking, stunned. They both nodded. There were underlying issues all right: the incompetence of professionals we had trusted for so long. It would take months of appointments scheduled every 8 weeks, then every 12 weeks, and every 6 months to get the programming right. In the meantime, my almost three-year-old was so communication-delayed that his results didn’t even fall on the speech development chart.

We made our way slowly back to the parking garage and got Nathan settled in his car seat. I sat gripping the steering wheel and staring at the concrete wall in front of me. Waunita was quiet, just giving me the time and space to gather my thoughts. We both knew that the day had been a tough one. I finally told her that all I wanted to do was cry, but that I couldn’t because I had to drive. What she said next will stick with me forever and has gotten me through some pretty hard times. “You know,” she said “on our way here, I saw a sign on a restaurant that said they have good pie. Since we can’t cry, let’s eat pie.”

I understood what she was saying. Nothing could change the past. Nothing was going to change how much more difficult things had just become. Nothing was going to make the work ahead any easier or make it go away. We wanted to sit in that parking garage and cry anyway. Instead, we found the restaurant and we ate some pie. I don’t remember the name of the restaurant, and I don’t know what kind of pie it was or even if it was good. In the years that followed, Waunita made good on her promise many times; I never had to go to an appointment alone.

I spent the next decade reintroducing sign language, reading book after book, homeschooling, talking myself hoarse, teaching sarcasm, humor, social skills, executive functioning skills, and “eating pie” on the days when it all seemed too hard. Some days eating pie meant taking a long walk, reading a good book, or baking cookies and eating way too many of them.

I look at my son and I see the brilliant, confident young man he has become, and I do my best not to think about the audiologists and speech therapists who were so willing to give up on him. He will graduate from high school this May with plans to pursue a degree in engineering. Grandma Waunita won’t see him graduate. While I am writing this, she is in hospice care and won’t be with us much longer. I recently took the opportunity to tell her that she is the one person in my life who has really understood my life as a mother. She smiled and told me that I have done a wonderful job. She said, “Motherhood is about doing what needs to be done.” I hope that other parents have a Waunita in their life. We all need someone who understands, someone who encourages us, and someone with whom you can eat some pie.  ~

H&V Communicator – Winter 2024