The way that I want to write about hearing loss is as a small component of a larger story. It’s unfair to say that their hearing had no bearing on my childhood, but it wasn’t everything.

My parents didn’t take me to the movies. But they did take me to the park, to Girl Scout meetings, and to friends’ houses after school. For everything they were unable to do, there were a thousand things they were able to do.

I never wrote that essay. I went to college and majored in English with the intention of becoming a writer. I wrote about everything except my parents — guys I liked, adventures with friends, Joni Mitchell, college life, the influence of gender in 20th century fiction. That all changed in the summer of 2003. I was about to be a senior in college. I was living in Greensboro, North Carolina, near campus, more than an hour away from my parents in Raleigh.

I had a cool internship and looked forward to writing my senior thesis. One day when I was out with a friend shopping for paper lanterns for a garden party, I got a phone call from my sister. “Something happened,” she said. “Dad’s been in a car accident.”

For a while, I didn’t know what was happening or even if he was alive. I threw laundry into a bag and drove in the direction of home, flying 90 miles per hour down the highway. When I got to the hospital I got the story. My father had been turning left and was hit by a man who had run a red light. — Beliefnet.com