Just Keep Swimming

I've lost my voice.  Again!  I know, it's becoming a bit of a habit. Not one that I enjoy, which is a shame.  Most habitual occupations are ones that you secretly enjoy, like sucking your thumb, drinking too much gin or reaching for a cigarette as soon as you get out of work - you get some pleasure from them.  I can't say that I get any comfort from not being able to speak.

"It'll be stress," people have said to me this week, "don't you think?"
If I could answer them then I would say that I don't think so.  I don't feel very stressed. I was tired but I've slept well for the last five nights (unheard of).  You are now thinking that I'm in denial and am not acknowledging the fact that my Dad died at the end of February and the funeral is next week.  You think that has to be stressful. I'm not sure it is.  It's sad but as I said before my overwhelming feeling is still pride at having had such a wonderful father.  I do think it's wrong that crematoriums are so busy funerals can't happen for at least a month but it's not stressful, in fact it takes some stress away because you don't have to rush to do everything.  Tears will have been a factor but it doesn't explain all the other times I've lost my voice (every 4-6 weeks for the last fiveyears). I haven't been stressed or sad, everytime. Speech therapy gave me a list of things to do, like not cough, drink only water, eat very little chocolate, yoga, have neck massages and a raft of vocal exercises. I do all of those and it makes no difference. The camera up the nose gave my vocal cords a clean bill of health and I'm even more laid back than usual at work at the moment because none of it really matters.

Louise Hay, alternative health guru and all-round-annoyingly-super-positive-person, has some ideas about health issues that become habits.  In her world, you have to embrace the symptoms as a clue to what is going on with your psyche then you say (ha) affirmations, to deal with it.  As I've tried everything else and people keep telling me it must be stress I thought I'd look at it with an open mind.

She says that problems with the throat are to do with blocked creativity.  So, I just need to unblock my creativity, give me that plunger, I'm ready to go for it. Just how you do that is a mystery.  I wasn't aware that it was blocked.  She says that laryngitis could also be to do with not speaking up for yourself and resentment of authority.  I know I said I was going to keep an open mind but seriously? I just can't help saying what I think; it just pops out. It's true, I'm not exactly a fan of some authority figures but I tend to find them funny, rather than resenting them.  Mostly, if people tell me what to do I will do it if I want or pretend to agree but do my own thing if I don't.  Do I need to actually start telling people their ideas are rubbish, rather than showing them my better ones? Writers always know it's best to show rather than tell but I'm willing to give it a go.

The other piece of advice people give me is to rest. Sitting around doing nothing doesn't help. I worked that out four years ago, in fact it just makes your neck and shoulders tense, which doesn't help. Taking people's advice, I had a day and a half off work. I didn't speak. The first half day I lay on the sofa feeling sorry for myself. It was boring. The next, I did silent housework. I was bored beyond belief. If I was meant to be standing up for myself then I was going to be at work. If people didn't want to hear my hoarse, whispery, breathy voice then that was their problem not mine. I made some signs. Kids like a challenge. A silent teacher can be fun!

While I was having my silent housework day I came across a photo of me and my Dad at a holiday park in Hayling Island. It's a cute picture.

It reminded me of how much I like swimming now and how if I'm asking for what I want, it's to just get back to swimming (physically and metaphorically). What the picture doesn't show is the level of my terror. Both Dad and I are smiling but I was frightened; scared of everything, especially water, dogs and bees and all of  them had been there that day. I wanted to be able to do it but I couldn't. Dad took me to Gloucester Park for swimming lessons. My cousin also went. I remember looking at her swimming across the width of the pool and being awestruck at how she wasn't clinging to the side in terrified tears. Her dad, my jolly green giant of an uncle (his joke, not mine) always tried stories to take away my fear. During a thunderstorm, he told me that it was just Bugs Bunny falling down the stairs. It never worked because I just wanted to know how a cartoon character had got into the sky in the first place. I wasn't a quick fix. It took patience and logic. For thunderstorms I needed statistics and counting and for swimming I needed hours of practice, gently letting air out of armbands and cajoling assurances that I could do it, which took more patience than a swimming teacher could manage so he started to teach me himself. He gave me mantras to say: "Look at me, I'm a gymnast," before jumping in and, "I won't drown if I keep going."

So, if you see me in the pool muttering to myself. I could be repeating the mantra, "I am free to ask for what I want. It is safe to express myself. I am at peace," which is Louise Hay's mantra for laryngitis.

One of the problems of this mantra is that when anyone asks me what I want, I think of food. The Long Suffering Husband is the same. When I gave up chocolate for my voice, I asked him to tell me something nice because I was feeling miserable. "Chocolate eclairs, they're nice," he said after some thought. Dad used to take me into the upstairs swimming pool cafe for a cup of bovril and a slice of hot buttered toast. Maybe, that's what I'll ask for. It's a long time since I've had Bovril.

The Expert

When I was younger, I wanted to be an expert at something and like all young people believed that it would just happen with luck and no effort. I then realised that expertise doesn't fall from on high into your lap but has to be worked at. Soon after, I decided that I was just too lazy and my attention span too short to master anything.

But I think I might have been wrong.

I am a virtuoso in voice loss. My skills as a reluctant mute are second to none. Although my true expertise is the observation of other people's reactions to someone who has lost their voice, which are often bizarre.

If you have no voice people will respond to many of your attempted utterings with, "Bless you." You find yourself thinking, "Bless you? Bless you? Why bless you? I didn't sneeze, I'm just quiet."

When you do speak people will say, "Pardon?" They will say it often. 

"I have no voice," you say.

"Pardon?" they reply.

Even people who can see how much effort you have gone to to get that simple sentance out will say it. Even those that have heard you will say it. 

When I lost my voice for the first time I decided to go to the doctor after two weeks.

"It won't be anything serious," he said. "The trouble is that most people don't know how to breathe. You need to breathe from here." He prodded his soft belly, more in the region of his intestine than his actual diaphragm. "I could refer you to a speach therapist but let's wait another week."

"Actually, I know about breathing because I'm a music teacher and it's very difficult to teach children how to sing without a voice."

"You see, you need to breathe out the sound. You are forcing it. I can tell you are."

"Yes, I was, so that you could hear me."

"Pardon?"

People will ask the oddest questions. 

"What's wrong with your voice?",

"How did you lose your voice?", and my absolute favourite, "Where did you lose your voice?" 

If I knew where I'd lost it, I'd go back and get it. A voice isn't like a cardigan. You can't re-trace your steps until you find the chair you draped it on the back of during your last hot flush. 

People will ask all these questions even after they've read the post-it note you are wearing on your chest. 

In church some parents were interrogating me about where their child was going to sit and which way they would walk in, so that they would be able to shout, "Jonny, Jonny, look at Mummy. I need to snapchat this."

I had managed to explain the general position of the class quite well with a mixture of forcing them to lip read and pointing but I didn't know exactly where Jonny was going to sit and I certainly wasn't clairvoyant enough to know, which of the two aisles the teacher would choose to walk them down. 

"I'm sorry, I don't know," I said.

"Pardon?"

I pointed to my post-it note. 

She jabbed at the note with her finger, "You're not singing today, then?"

I shrugged. Some questions can't be answered. 

When you are quiet people join you. They whisper. This is completely hopeless when you have asked a child to read your instructions to the class. In a class of thirty children I could only find one who was prepared to use their normal speaking voice and he thought I was faking.

"You're just pretending so that you give us a fun lesson, aren't you?"

The fun lesson was to sit in silence and draw what they thought they could hear in Beethoven's Battle of Wellington. 

Not everyone is quieter. The Long Suffering Husband is used to these problems now and so he will often interpret for me. I have some signals that I developed during the first silent period. It started when I wrote the letters Y E S on the fingers of my left hand and N O on the other. 'No' became a very satisfying gesture. 

Last night we were at an adult music school concert, which we force the LSH to come to so that he can keep my friend's husband company when we are playing in the band. Both men are quite reluctant attendees of this concert but luckily you can eat and drink throughout, so after half a bottle of red wine and some cheese for the ears ('Allo 'Allo reference) the LSH is quite jolly.  Eating crisps quietly is a fun game that he's not very good at and there is always a huge crunch during the string group's performance that makes me laugh. With no voice, laughing is OK in these situations. I sound a bit like Muttley (if you didn't get the 'Allo 'Allo reference you are definitely to young for this one) but laughter is contagious and he isn't silent.

"Oh dear, you won't let me come to any more of these concerts if I carry on like this will you?" he whispered, hopefully.

I gave him the sign, which he loudly translated before the meaning became clear to him.

"No.......shit!"

Apparently, being voiceless is funny. I have fun with it, as best as I can but I am still a little shocked when people point and laugh after I've tried to speak.

If you can't say anything......

There is a particularly traumatic storyline running in the Archers at the moment and it's one that is set to run and run.  Much has been written already about the abuse of Helen Titchner by her husband, which has been carefully timed to coincide with the long overdue legislation on coercive control. http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2016/02/helen-s-story-abuse-archers-reminds-me-my-own-so-i-m-willing-her-leave  This storyline is well written but it is upsetting the listeners. Most listeners have been swearing at the radio for about a year.  In our house the Long Suffering Husband mutters, "Bastard," under his breath and even the dog leaves the room everytime Rob speaks. Listeners have taken to Twitter in droves to complain about how 'unrealistic' this is.  They don't believe that her parents haven't noticed, they don't believe that she would put up with it, they don't think it would have gone on so long, they don't think Henry sounds like a normal 4 year old, they don't believe that her friend, Kirsty, isn't banging on the door day and night trying to help.

People have said that they aren't going to listen until it's all over. They have claimed that this story is bad for their mental health.

It's worse for Helen. Don't panic - I know she's not real; she can't be because this story will probably have a good ending for her.  Most women in her situation suffer in silence for years; ten or twenty is not uncommon before the husband's behaviour escalates to a point that it can no longer be ignored. In England and Wales 8% of women will experience domestic violence a year and 2 women a week will die at the hands of their partner or former partner.  How many of us will swear blind that we have never known anyone who has suffered from domestic violence?   Even when people do know they place the responsibility firmly back with the woman. It becomes her job to leave him and never go back; to be strong at a point when all her strength has been taken from her.

This story is upsetting me too and it's making me feel guilty.  Should I have done more when women told me things that made me worry about them? I've woken up this morning, thinking about one woman in particular.  I have lost my voice again and this time I seem to be on complete silent mode.

I knew a woman, briefly, whose name I can't even remember, who was married to a preacher at one of those happy-clappy churches.  Everyone said what a wonderful man he was.  She knew that.  He made sure of it.  He told her, "I'm a saint to everyone round here." Over a few weeks she started to paint a slightly different picture.  It helped that I was a complete stranger, with no power to interfere in her life. I worried about some things she said.  She asked me how I managed my housekeeping and I was surprised.  I had thought housekeeping money had gone out with the ark.  I asked her if she had a job and she told me that she would like to work but her husband wouldn't allow it.  She had to be at home for him and the children.  She told me that he insisted on having fish for tea on Friday, as he was a good Christian but as he didn't really like most fish it had to be smoked salmon.  This was before Lidl and her £20 a week housekeeping money didn't quite stretch to luxury items like smoked salmon. One week she was very distressed because he had invited a lot of people round for dinner and she didn't have enough housekeeping money to cater for them.  I suggested that she just tell him that she needed more money for this event and, maybe, a little help. She visibly shook at the thought.  I slipped a £5 note in her handbag when she wasn't looking and took a homemade cheesecake round later that evening.  Another time she joked that she had been praying to Jesus to delay her period because she didn't have enough money for sanitary products.  "Oh, for Gods sake," I said, "That's ridiculous.  He needs to give you more money."
"He can't.  He's teaching me about the cost of things.  He can't just give me money whenever I ask for it.  How will I ever learn to manage a budget if he does that?"
"He sounds like a bastard to me.  If I were you I'd just bleed on everything.  That'll teach him!"
She laughed before clapping her hands over her mouth in horror.
I didn't see her for a month.
I worried but did nothing.  I put it from my mind.
I saw her in the distance and ran to catch her up.  The thought crossed my mind that she was avoiding me.
"I haven't seen you for ages," I said.
"Oh, hello," she pretended she hadn't seen me earlier. "No, I, er, well I lost my voice."
"How frustrating."
She laughed. Small bubbly, girlish giggles.  "It's my fault."
"What's your fault?" I bristled ready to ring the police or go round and confront him personally, or maybe not, on reflection I wasn't that brave.
"Well you see, after I saw you last time I noticed that I was having some unkind thoughts and so I prayed.  I asked God to make me say only nice things."
"And you lost your voice?"
"Yes.  Funny isn't it?"
"Not exactly.  Sounds to me like God wants you to say the bad things."
"Oh, you are so funny," she said before pulling the hood of her coat over her head and rushing away.
I never saw her again and someone told me that they moved.

I'm wondering if my voice is allergic to the Church, as it always seems to disappear at the end of term, when I have spent time preparing for our school end of term services.  Maybe my voice gets cross at a God that allows for women to be treated so badly and thinks, "If I can't say anything nice, I won't say anything at all."

That Crow!

My voice has gone again.  A day and a half of normal vocal sounds was as much as I have been able to manage since the 12th of December and I'm tired.  I'm not sure if I'm tired because I'm ill or I'm tired because I'm tired of not being able to speak properly.  It makes me rather useless (after all what is the point of a music teacher who can't sing - or even speak?) and I'm struggling with the constant dilemma of whether I should be working or not.  I had a sick day yesterday and felt guilty.  I did nothing.  I didn't practise the piano or write my blog or read a book or do some knitting or sort out my recipes or bake cakes or go swimming.  Instead, I sat watching rubbish TV, worrying about what I would do the next day.  Today, I decided to go back in.  After all, what is the point sitting at home worrying?

Now, I don't want to appear ungrateful and I know that people are only trying to help but I really want people to stop asking me what I think it is.  I don't know.  I have to wait another 2 weeks until I can see someone who might have more of a clue.  I also find I'm getting a bit tetchy with people who are telling me about when they lost their voice, about someone they know who lost their voice,or how they know how it feels.  And I'm afraid that the worst thing of all for me is the people who are telling me what it could be.  I'm still holding out for 'nothing - it will just get better.' I don't want to know about stretched vocal chords, polyps, nodules, throat cancer or bugs.

Despite the difficulty of teaching music with no voice I am really glad I went in today.  The foundation stage class and I created a 'Rumpus' that Max from Where the Wild Things are would be proud of.  Year ones and twos sang in Chinese, Japanese, banged instruments in time (sort of) and sang about having a mouse in their hamster jam.  That would be terrible, wouldn't it?  It would be like having a rogue plum in your strawberry jam - yuk!

  

Now sing with me.  This is fun, Honestly....

"I saw a mouse, where? There on the stair.  Where on the stair? Right there!  A little mouse with clogs on well I declare going clip, clippety clop on the stair! A mouse in Old hamster jam!" 

Although, I've been ungrateful for the suggestions of what is wrong from adults the children have been a delight.  When I aplogised to a class for coughing and then croaking at them a child said, "You can't do anything about insects."  I was confused until they sang me the B.U.G song.  

Today I couldn't find the audio lead for the computer and so it had no sound.  "Maybe that's what's happened to you?"  I've lost my audio lead.  There's always a technical solution.

 

We have a crow that visits our school.  We have one of those 1970's school halls with a flat roof and tiny windows all the way around the top.  The crow sits on the flat roof of the kitchen and bangs on the window with his beak whenever he can hear singing.  We haven't seen him since before Christmas and then last week (during my day and a half of normal voice) he re-appeared.  A colleague suggested that he had been absent because he hadn't heard my singing and we laughed that maybe he had stolen my voice and only brought it back last week.  I shared this idea with the infant children, who all agreed that that must have been exactly what happened.  Today, I told the children that the crow had stolen my voice again and they all needed to sing beautifully, so that he would re-appear and bring my voice with him.  This prompted a little boy to say, "What I don't understand is...." 

"Oh dear," I thought, "This sounds like a question I'm not going to be able to answer."  Sometimes the pressure of small children who think you know everything can be too much to bear.

"What I don't understand is why the crow would take a beautiful voice and leave you with an old ladies voice!"

We did have a theory that maybe the crow was the re-incarnation of an old music teacher so maybe it's that old ladies voice.  I like that theory and won't be considering any of the suggestions that google gave me for what being stalked by a crow symbolises.