MARY ANN FITZMORRIS / L’Observateur / September 25, 2000

Fall is in the air.The weather has been absolutely lovely.Thiskind of climate puts a spring in the step and a smile on the face.

For everybody but me.

No, this kind of weather puts me in a bad mood. Such a funk thatthe most often heard question around here these days is, “Are you snapping at me?” They mean this literally. Whenever I need to get the attention ofsomeone around here, I snap my fingers, or clap. I have no voice.Grandpa can feel barometer shifts in his bones; I feel it in my throat. My vocal chords go on vacation.This happens every spring and fall, and every time I get a cold, like lagniappe from hell. For someone who loves to talk, such athing is maddening. For someone who needs to talk – like someonewith kids – such a thing is unthinkable.

Trust me, gesture-nagging is totally worthless. I need to getplacards printed with the most used phrases. DID YOU BRUSH YOURTEETH? WHERE ARE YOUR SHOES? STOP IT! STOP IT RIGHT NOW! My husband is no help. He immediately dismisses any exaggeratedmouth movements with the statement, “I can’t read lips.”He’s not a partner you’d want to have in charades, either, as he stands there blankly staring at my desperate attempts to physically communicate.

“Can anyone figure out what Mommy is saying?” he finally asks, as I storm off to write a poison pen note, complete with bold letters, words underlined, and exclamation points galore.

The kids find these notes entertaining. Or is it challenging? Theyare speedily written, as if I am talking, and almost as fast. Thismakes them practically illegible to anyone but a pharmacist. To akid they are completely useless. “You expect us to read this catscratch?” both kids sniff together.

Rewriting the request slowly in print takes enough time to render the idea moot, whatever it was. I crumple the page and gesture tothem to forget it.

“What?” they ask stupidly in unison. I’m tempted to mouth the wordJINX just to see if they’re paying attention, but it’s too much trouble to bother. They go back to ignoring me, which is what theyusually do. And it’s so much easier when I have laryngitis.If only the reverse could be true. They won’t let me ignore them.Voicelessness made me realize just how much conversing we do from room to room. My son blasts into the house, “Ma!” No response.”Hey Ma!” he shouts even louder. Even though my voice has beengone three days he’s still thinking I didn’t hear him. Afterwaving my arms from a chair in the corner, I have to stomp my feet to acknowledge his calls before they keep escalating in volume.

At least he wants something. My daughter likes the way the wordMom sounds.

She says it so often, for no apparent reason, it’s almost as if she’s checking to see that I’m still here. I usually grunt inresponse, since she usually doesn’t follow it with anything, but even grunting is hard with laryngitis.

But the most irritating thing, by far, is negotiating through lip reading, hand movements, and bold letter nasty notes. My childrenare masters at this, since I am highly susceptible to pester – er, persuading.

Cell phone negotiations are particularly hard with laryngitis. Dadoften calls for my vote when he’s out with the kids. Over theweekend I cell-nixed a social engagement for my son. The phonerang again and I repeated my decision in a whispershout. It turnedout to be about a social engagement for my daughter, since it was the father of one of her friends.

I declined that one, too, according to the Law of Even Stevens, but not before I finished a lengthy explanation of my voicelessness. I’ve just this minute concluded a whisperedcomparison of DiGiorno vs. Tombstone frozen pizza, since Dad hasthe kids at the store.

I remember a woman from my childhood who had laryngitis for months at a time (and that was before cell phones!). As a kid it didn’tmake sense to me that her voice could just disappear one day and not come back.

Now it does.

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