I had gone to the ENT, and for a start the nurse took me to a room to test my hearing. I sat behind a glass with earphones on my ears, ready to signal with my right hand as soon as I heard the sounds she was raising from her keyboard. She suddenly told me, ‘Excuse me but I have to go out a moment. Remove your earphones and sit down here outside. There was no other chair, so I sat down in her chair as she left. After a little while there was a knock at the door. I said, ‘Come in’, and in came a mummy with a little girl. I remained seated in front of the keyboard, and on looking at the child I realised she was taking me for the doctor who was going to test her. I told her, ‘You know what we’re going to do, don’t you? You go seat there inside, I place the earphones on your ears, and then as soon as you hear a sound you put up your right hand, OK?’ She nodded assent, adjusted the earphones, I fumbled on the keyboard, although of course I had no idea what to do with it, and I let out a low sound in a whisper. I then began to raise my voice, and the girl suddenly lifted her hand. She had heard me through the glass. I did as if I were noting down something on a paper and went on with the experiment although by now I could hardly refrain from bursting with laughter. Suddenly the girl removed her earphones, literally jumped out of her chair and pointing at me she shouted to her mother, ‘It’s all wrong! He is laughing! It is not true!’ I burst out laughing before her perplexed mother who took a little time to understand the joke and to laugh with me and to calm her daughter down till the three of us laughed together and the nurse came back and she took he mother and the child away and went on with my test. 

At the end she told me I needed a new hearing aid and quoted its price. When she saw my face she hastened to add that I needed not to worry as I could pay by instalments in 14 months. But she checked herself at once and she asked me my age. I told her I was 85, and she reacted, ‘Then it cannot be, for that age there is no credit.’ That is, she did not expect me to live more than 14 months. I started laughing again and told her that for 14 months I could manage with the old hearing aid. She looked confused. She got up and went to fetch the girl who was waiting outside with her mother. When going out our eyes met and I winked at her. She certainly would be granted credit.

Margaret A. Salinger, daughter of the writer J. D. Salinger who died recently, describes here a situation that affects many people and makes us all think. It happened when she was 11 and her brother 6.

‘Sometime after my aborted stay at camp during the summer of ’66, my parents announced they were getting a divorce. Or, perhaps I should say, they tried to announce it. It had been in the air for quite some time and came as no surprise to me. In fact, when they called us into the house to say they had something to speak to us about, something they never, ever did – speak to us as a team, I mean – I slumped down in our big leather chair and beat them to the punch. I rolled my eyes and, with my best ten-year-old ennui, said, “You’re getting a divorce, aren’t you? “Well, yes, actually, we are”, my mother said as she started to deliver her speech about how sometimes when grown-ups can’t get along…

She was interrupted as my little brother, just six years old, burst into tears and ran out of the house and down the road. On the doorstep, I told my parents in no uncertain terms, “Wait here, I’ll talk to him”. I found him by the roadside, down a bank, curled up in some leaves and sobbing. “Matthew, stop crying and listen to me.” You had to speak a little sharply to him at first because he could be quite hysterical, understandably lost in the swirling storm of rage and fear in and around him. A few months prior to their announcement, he’d been furious at my mother about something, and he had sat on the stairs, giving vent to the obvious tension in the house, screaming down at my father, eyes bulging, blood veins visible in his pale, six-year-old’s neck, “Divorce Mom! Divorce her!” I didn’t even know he knew the word.

Matthew took his head out of his hands and, snuffling, looked up at me. “Listen”, I said, “nothing is going to be any different when they get divorced, except maybe they won’t fight. They both love you. They just hate each other. Daddy will still live in his house, Mom and you and I will still live in our house, and Daddy will still come over to visit and play ball on the roof and go for a walk with the doggies and everything. All right? It’s no big deal.” He smiled damply and said, “Okay”, and got up. Big Sister had spoken. I put my arm around his shoulder for a second or two as we walked back to the house. I told my parents we were fine now and that I’d explained to him that nothing was going to change except that you two won’t fight as much, as I glared darkly at them. Then we went back to whatever it was each of us had been doing, alone, before the “family conference”.’

(Margaret A. Salinger, Dream Catcher, Scribner, London 2001, p. 204)