Five Senses-I remember them well

By Henry Burt Stevens

“Your assignment for this week is to write an essay using all five of your senses to develop as much description as possible,” our instructor Joyce Shenk told us at the end of our first class on Journaling for Writers which was held in March 2003 at the Peace River Center for Writers in Punta Gorda, Florida.

Good luck, I thought as I pondered how I would ever complete this assignment.

Great grampa Hank sees the world as a Grandma Moses painting.  Flat; only flat, because he’s had eye problems all his life and his depth perception is about zero.  Where normal people see a wondrous panorama I see the same panorama as a flat panel computer screen picture.  What’s to describe about that?

The world is full of sounds; music, children’s laughter, the crashing surf at Venice Beach, the happy chatter of friends,  the exciting buzz of a cocktail party or the loud nightclub, the whispers shared in confidence and love-do you really want my report?  Great grampa Hank is very hard of hearing. I can’t hear much over 1000 cycles per second and most of the spoken information is contained in the “s” and “th” type sounds that are in the range of 1000 cycles per second to 4000 cps and up to 8000 cps.  In the range were I can understand sounds I only make sense out of some of what I hear under ideal conditions.  Introduce background noise, other people talking, traffic noises, music, or any other type of noise and I can only make out bits and pieces of information.  I don’t have any discrimination left that separates the sounds and allows me to pick out what I want to hear.  I just hear noise. No information.  You want a report on sounds from me?

My wife yells in from her sewing room, “Turn on the stove hood fan, you’re cooking cauliflower.”  How did she know?  It never occurred to me to turn on the fan.

Yeah, food can taste good.  I remember. But, now I’m pretty much limited to identifying food by texture.  I certainly couldn’t do a food critic review, or even imaginatively describe what I had for lunch yesterday.  How about a texture report on eating at Red Lobster?

Feeling and touch are still with me.  I can find the home keys on my computer keyboard-they’re the ones with the little bumps on them.

So what’s left that’s good?

Today is good.  I’m up and around.  My wife and I are happy in our mobile home.  We have many good friends.  We go out to eat when we feel like it.  I get to create personal essays such as this.  Our children are all employed in work they find satisfying.  There’s lots left that is good.

But, in truth, this assignment is for a younger reporter still in possession of their five senses.

Henry Burt Stevens

6/30/2003