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Last October one of my front teeth came loose. I wasn’t my real tooth, but a post and crown, and the post had deteriorated. As is typical with dentists, I was told that I would need an expensive and painful extraction/implant to solve the problem. I didn’t like the idea, but accepted it. What I couldn’t accept was my dentist’s smug pronouncement that if the loose tooth came out whilst I waited for my surgery, I would have to go without a front tooth until my appointment.
“But I’m a teacher,” I cried. I can’t talk properly without a front tooth. My dentist held firm. If the tooth came out, I would be spending my days with a gaping whole in the front of my smile.
My bad luck didn’t end there. It was the end of the year, and the oral surgeon was jammed with people trying to get in before their deductibles renewed in January. The nearest appointment was six weeks away.
In that time I lost sleep, I fretted. I stopped biting into anything, and in the end stopped chewing entirely on the side where my loose tooth resided. Every time the tooth moved I froze and checked to see if it was still there. The second I woke up each morning I quickly ran my tongue across my teeth, making sure my sleep-grinding hadn’t knocked it out. The day they took the mold of my upper jaw for the surgery–a gummy mixture that had to be set and pried off– I sat shaking in the chair, tears in my eyes as I feared having to go weeks without the tooth.
It wasn’t just about the impaired talking I pleaded with my dentist about. I’ve seen myself without this tooth and it’s frightening. My whole face changes, leaving me looking…well…hickish. Uneducated. Freaky. My worry and sleeplessness was simple vanity. I felt I’d be looked at differently and judged unfairly without a front tooth.
The day of the surgery I had to leave the surgeon’s office and walk toothless across the road to my dentist’s office to have my partial denture fitted. Veri-husband dutifully sat in the waiting room during the surgery, and when I came out after the extraction, I tried to keep my numb and swollen lips closed over the gape. Though my husband has proven so many times that not matter how I looked, he would still love me for me — I foolishly didn’t want him to see me toothless. The denture was fitted and my fears were *finally* over.
Back at school I was talking to a parent who was born deaf and runs a sign-language activity. By ‘talk’ I mean me flailing my arms around trying to remember the few signs I know, and her gamely reading my lips. She asked about how I was healing, and I tried to explain to her that I was fine, but the denture was giving me trouble. I had trouble getting across the word, “denture” largely because I don’t think it’s a word she was looking for me to use. And then, without thinking, I popped the denture out to show her it…and my gaped smiled. Just like that, I showed her the very thing I’d been vainly trying to hide – from everyone, including my husband.
The only explanation I can think of is that, compared to her daily struggles, a hole in the middle of my mouth is nothing. Compared to her constant battle to understand be understood, which I watch her do with endless patience, grace, and humor, I didn’t fear judgment or disgust. Just acceptance.
It seems people are quite up in arms over a recent video depicting Sarah Palin giving an interview with a turkey being slaughtered in the background. In some places I’ve seen it, the actual slaughter was blurred to…protect the innocent?
Again, I’m reminded about the hoopla over Palin engaging in aerial hunting of wolves. Inhumane. Disgusting. Appalling.
Really?
Ten billion animals are slaughtered for food every year. That means, in Britain, 26 animals are slaughered every second. Yet people are up in arms when they are suddenly confronted by animal cruelty and murder. I can never quite wrap my head around it: meat is fine, just don’t tell me where it comes from. Okay, maybe I can come to accept that; our culture is based around meat. But to then get bent out of shape to see animals ruthlessly murdered? Face the music: you participate in this every single day. For some, every single meal.
Maybe these headlines, though perplexing, are good. It will keep up awareness of the horror of our diets, and perhaps make someone sitting in judge of Palin perhaps take a small look inwards and see what kind of impact they have on those cute little animals squirming to be free.
This morning I checked out ESPN.com to check out last-minute NFL news, only to find this quote:
This weekend is Miami’s Super Bowl against New England.
Oh good. Again. The Eagles said this in week 12, the out-of-the-playoff race Ravens said this in week 13, the Jets in week 15, and now Miami in week 16. And undoubtedly, most of the teams in our 14-0 season start have played the Pats with the same focused intensity.
I think this is one of the most impressive stories of our 14-win start. We haven’t just quietly won game after game, but teams put out their best effort, gathered all they had and energized themselves for one final push, put all their drive into one final game…against us. Four teams and it’s still three weeks until our first sudden-death playoff game.
I’m proud to be a fan of the Patriots. I’ve watched them come from being perennial underdogs, the team no one ever gave credit to, with a plucky, hard-working QB and brilliant if misunderstood coach, to a team feared and therefore loathed by other teams, sportswriters, and fans. The Patriots have defied the salary cap and used patience and work ethic to built a team destined for the record books, not matter what happens with the rest of their season. And people hate them for it.
As someone who openly admits to being a poor sport, I can easily recognize it in others. Just this morning I heard two talking heads debate both Indy’s and NE’s decision to play their starters with nothing to play for until the playoffs. The Pats were treated like greedy, covetous misers, and the Colts decision was lauded as intelligent as always.
So go on, I know jealousy when I see it; having been a Pats fan through the lean years I know what it’s like to envy a persistently, achingly dominant team. Go ahead and play us like it’s the Super Bowl, because you’re season ended in week 12. But please, stop making the Patriots into and evil team just because their years of working, planning, preparing, have finally paid off.
I belong to an internet forum, and recently they had a photo contest. People submitted photos on the theme: what does fall mean to you. Even though I have no photography background and have no natural talent, I live in New England and figured it may give me an edge.
As the fall season descended, I carried my camera around … and promptly forgot to take pictures whenever we were anywhere scenic. In fact, it seemed like the only time I remembered I had my camera was when it was raining, and forgot about it during my long walks under the vibrant fall foliage.
I further handicapped myself by mixing up the deadline and realizing 10 minutes before midnight on the final day. No time to crop, photoshop, enhance, hide. It was all I could do to get them up on Photobucket and sent in.
Once the contest started I immediately voted for myself. Normally I would be too embarrassed to ego-vote, but I feared that NO ONE would cast even a sympathy vote for any of my three entries, and my photos would sit there with big zeroes next to them.
I was quite surprised to find a few days later when one of my photos was tied for second place. SECOND! Over the days I looked at the voting again and again, completely disbelieving that I was maintaining second place. A photo I took.
The contest ended this morning, and I managed to come in second. I am still in shock, and keep grilling my husband, asking if he found a way to vote for me, but for a members-only forum, it’s impossible.
I hate to hear about dreams. I hate it when people drone on in detail about their ‘wacky’ dreams where they flew like superman, took a test naked and then fell off a building: I know you’re dream was wacky. Everyone has wacky dreams. They never make sense. And don’t talk to me about symbolism, anything can be made to seem symbolic. Just look at all the e-mails that went around after 9/11 about the numbers 9 and 11. In fact, when I read a novel or watch a movie, I skip over the dream sequences. In my view, dreams are just a cheap way to link ideas together, and make a stab at being ‘deep’ in the process. I know, kill me with examples of their place in exposition, but I don’t care. I hate hearing about dreams. Period.
So I’m going to be a hypocrite and write about a dream. Last night I had a dream–and I’ll at least spare you the ‘wacky’ details–about my dad. My dad died just after I turned 12, when I was still a kid, unfinished, so little of what I am today.
Since then I’ve thought a lot about it would be like to still have him in my life, especially during major events in my life: my graduations, my move overseas, my wedding–and I’ve marked all the significant dates, like the moment my life flipped and suddenly I had lived longer without him in my life than with him in my life. Along the way I’ve periodically dreamt about him. In my dreams I’ve gotten be with him and know him as a teenager, a college student, and now full-fledged, mortgage-holding adult.
I cherish these dreams. They come like a gift–sometimes they come if he’s been on my mind, like when his brother(and best friend) died and I curiously found myself mourning them both–but sometimes, like last night, these dreams come completely out of the blue. I’d like to say these dreams make sense, and we talk and catch up and I tell him everything in my life he’s missed, and he gives me sage advice before parting, but like every dream, they never really make any sense. But in the morning I awake with the warm glow that comes after spending time with family you haven’t seen in a long time and miss.
Lately I’ve been weepy. When my middle school student–after doing a ten-minute quick write–read aloud a story about her grandfather’s death, I became weepy. When I watched THE WAR on PBS, every time they cued up the violins as they panned across a smudgy picture, I became weepy. When I looked at my happy but frantic labrador retriever and thought about the tough little life she had before coming to us, I became weepy.
The thing is–I’m not a weeper. I’ve sat dry-eyed amongst a sobbing audience during Schindler’s List, I’ve felt like stone as I tried to muster up a tear or two to fit in at funerals. It’s not that I’m unemotional, it just seems to take a bit longer for me to feel really moved to tears. But lately I’ve been surprised and –truthfully–somewhat amused when I get the slight shiver that comes before my eyes start to well up. Is that really ME? Moi? Feeling weepy?
One of the many benefits of making my way through my thirties is that I have suddenly gotten a clarity about who I am. I no longer look at myself through a lens of what I want to be or should be, but actually have found myself both discovering and accepting–well, me. It’s seems like such an obvious and easy accomplishment, and I’ve had some minor success doing this throughout my life, but never has it come so naturally and so casually. It’s really quite an amazing discovery, suddenly thinking about oneself and suddenly realizing, “Oh, so thaaat’s who I am.
So as I mulled over my newfound teariness, I wondered what was making me feel so sad. And it hit me. I’m not quick to weep because I’m sad, but actually, well, I’m…happy. In the past I’ve been so fearful and worried about life that I numb myself to keep from becoming overwhelmed. Like if I allow myself to weep a little, it may release a powerful and unstoppable flood of emotions that would drown me. But now, my life is good. It is full and rich and happy, so much so that I can stop and indulge in a weep over the small sorrows in life.
