Earwax.

If you don’t know, I used to write a daily blog. It was back in the ‘00s and ‘10s, when ye blogs were the way to stay in the know and everyone who was anyone linked their way around the internet. You probably don’t know, because I never let anyone know about it. I made it private as soon as it began picking up steam, for reasons I will hopefully someday divulge. Only seven people had access to it, and not even my mother was one on the list.
I fancied myself a young mother David Sedaris type. I only ever wanted to make someone laugh. Essays on the ridiculousness of a certain mother who cleans out a car jam-packed with old french fries and thirty tiny lost monkeys from a party favor barrel. In her vacuuming rage, said mother forgets to shut the door, allowing for two feet of snow to fill the drivers’ seat overnight.

I wanted to be a funny writer and tell goofy stories like the time I sat on my back porch one evening in Colorado and a huge monitor lizard (non-native in every way) with long toenails scooted up to my chair and I screamed in shock, clambered onto the outdoor patio table, and began banging on the window for Joe to come save my life. Word got out, and I was the new crazy lady on the block, claiming to have seen tropical reptiles scurrying through my yard. Preposterous until finally a young neighbor couple admitted their pet had escaped through their doggy door. What kind of people let reptiles run loose in their house?

This weekend was straight out of a Sedaris book, menial and absurd. It was after my shower and I was fishing in the bathroom cabinet for the Q-tip package–the kind that has 500, the kind I buy once every three years, maybe (if we haven’t drained them for a craft project)–and I blindly found it and dug my fingers in to grab a couple.
I knew as soon as I touched them, something was wrong. It felt familiarly sticky. Disgusted, I yanked several out. They were covered with orangey goo, like Bigfoot or Big Bird or some nasty giant had experienced a massive eardrum explosion and cocked his runny head over the Q-tip box. I couldn’t imagine what child of mine would have this much wax buildup in his ears unnoticed, let alone decide, unprovoked, to dig it out with a Q-tip. However, it wasn’t improbable that one of my kids would put a used Q-tip back in the box, so I had to consider this could very well be a possibility.

A quick look in the box revealed a dozen more with the tips completely saturated, the entire cottony ends bearing the weight of a thimbleful of ear wax.

A thimble-full.

Whoever did this must be bleeding out, whatever it could mean in the realm of ear wax.

It was horrific, but I felt a quick empathy, because I, too, am a prolific waxer.

My own ear wax woes began quite young, since I was an ENT’s dream patient. Tonsils out before the age of five and a burst eardrum shortly after–I knew exactly what it was like to wake up in the morning with my head glued to my pillow. The electric heating pad sandwiched in my pillow case on many a night coaxed the jelly right out through my ears like a melting candle.

Who knew there was so much goo in a person’s head? Who knew the ear itself was a faucet of some sort under certain conditions?

After the early on waxing, the most peculiar thing I became aware of was a strange gift for popping my ears. Some folks struggle, on planes, or with a cold, or at mountain altitude, to banish the pressure building in one’s ears. They chew gum and tug on their ear lobes and complain of discomfort. I’ve been able, since I was a child, to pop my ears on command. In fact, I pop them when I’m nervous or bored. It is a habit, not unlike a good knuckle cracking session. As far as I know, no one can hear me popping my ears, but throughout the years I have flexed this secret talent to every lucky physician who has ever examined me for a routine physical. When they peer into my canal with their black tipped otoscope, I get to clicking, pop pop pop. Not one doctor has ever mentioned it, to my disappointment.

At the age of twenty-three, I began doing senior care. This is where I met Bernita, a precious elderly woman with cats that ate tuna and pooped right on the carpet near my feet out of spite. The cats, I mean. They didn’t like me playing Yahtzee, and they likely knew I was in it for the monthly trip to Coldstone Creamery, when Bernita paid. Bernita had a wonderful Tuesday routine, as reliable as All-Bran. On the first Tuesday, I’d take her to K-Mart. On the second, she had her nails done and her stray hairs plucked. On the third, we went to the mall. And on the fourth Tuesday of every month, we had her hearing aids checked at the technician’s.

The first time I took Bernita to get her hearing aids serviced, I didn’t quite understand why we were going. I had no idea why she needed to leave her house to have someone change out the batteries. It turned out, the technician’s main job was to check on a patient’s ear health. This included removing wax buildup that increases as a result of pushing the hearing aid into the canal and consequently backing it up like a plugged toilet.

I watched, fascinated, as the technician weaved a long plastic stick down into dear Bernita’s ear and fished out an impressive hunk of wax. Bernita sat quietly and patiently. She was nearly deaf without the aids, and so I stumbled into the awkward small talk that comes with routine ear wax removal. I asked the tech thoughtful questions, apparently good ones. Or maybe she had never met someone so interested in hearing aids, and something deep inside her was stirred.  At the next appointment, she asked if I loved doing senior care.
“It’s alright, I guess,” I said, non-committal. She looked me in the eye with the utmost sincerity.

“Well if you ever tire of it, I’d love to have you work for me.”

You will understand, then, that every visit thereafter was weird, so I stuck to the waiting room while Bernita had her ears freed up and batteries checked. I never tired of senior care, but I did get pregnant and we moved. Thankfully I was rescued from my potential-filled future of excavating ears.
But the ear problems were just beginning, again. Pregnancy had a sneaky little side effect on me.

At thirty-two weeks, when a woman is starting to feel huge and uncomfortable, I couldn’t get out of bed. It was like my head could not get off the pillow. I felt terrible.
Joe, filled with concern over the pregnant condition and impatient at best, whisked me to the emergency room. Vitals were taken, fluid was administered. It seemed I was just a tad under hydrated. I laid in the bed, apologizing to Joe for getting us into this situation, and he patted my arm.
“Why don’t you ask the PA about your ear while we’re here?” he prodded. I could barely hear out of one ear and mostly assumed it was one of those crazy symptoms a woman didn’t bother asking about. But Joe was right–why not ask now?

The PA looked in my ear and wordlessly left the room. When he returned, he had a long, flexible plastic stick in his hand. I remember where I had seen those before. Bernita.

He stuck it down into my ear and the relief was instant. But when he pulled it out, I was mortified. A huge plug of ear wax clung to the tool.
Joe laughed.

He laughed. I could have killed him.

When the bill from the ER arrived, I couldn’t believe it. It had been charged–itemized, even. I’d gone to the emergency room to get earwax removed. I could’ve died of embarrassment. I could just picture the PA going home that day to tell his wife about the nasty clump he’d pulled from my ear.
“And to think,” he probably said, and they’d probably howled with laughter, him probably giddily stumbling to the punch line, “she thought there was actually something wrong with her!!”

To be honest, my ears have never been the same. Each pregnancy was more miserable because of ear wax woes. I’ve spent nights pouring warmed olive oil into my ears and lying on my bed, trying to melt out my sorrow. I wear pod-style headphones every night when I walk my dog, and it makes me uneasy, because I’m confident I’m backing up my ear canal by repeatedly shoving the little speakers in. My poor ears are trash compacting ear wax.
My ears are never far from my mind, and probably even less so than yours, if your head is even comparable in size.

This is why, after my disgust, I had immediate compassion when I lifted those filthy Q-tips from their wax-encrusted box. My poor child. I’ve passed these faulty waxy genetics on. My poor, poor baby, I thought, and then I caught a whiff of a strong scent rising from the package.

I lifted an orange Q-tip to my nose and sniffed, then pulled off a clump of the wax and rubbed it between my fingers.

Soap.

It was soap. Dial, to be exact, liquid and orange. An entire bottle of hand soap had been spilled into the Q-tips. It had evaporated and solidified, the exact consistency of earwax, the usual color, the perfect storm.

I stormed into the hallway.
“Kids!” I bellowed. “Get in here!”