Here I Go Again

on my own.

Teeth

I have a lot of problems with my teeth, both recently and in the past.

I think about them all the time: how permanent they are, and how irreplaceable. If you do something to your teeth, it is done for ever: teeth don't grow back.

I had braces for seven years, starting when I was six. The position of my jaw was deforming my face, and my front teeth stuck out in all sorts of directions (thank God I didn't live in the medieval period -- I would have been a total freak. And yes, yes I do think about these things).

Whatever. My family fixed my mouth through a long series of braces and retainers and weird rubber band things and thankfully no headgear was involved. My orthodontist was so proud of the work he had done, he used my before and after shots in his orthodontist lectures (which I'm sure were... scintillating to say that least). My orthodontist also spoke with a strong Brooklyn Jewish accent and called me Angel Face. I hearted him.

I think that because I had been so aware of my mouth and my teeth from a very young age, I always had a deep rooted fear of doing something to my teeth -- losing an adult tooth or breaking an adult tooth... etc. How horrible, I truly thought, it would be so do something so irrevocable -- and to your face.

So of course I broke my tooth this year. And not just any tooth. My right front tooth. Perhaps I should also mention that I have huge teeth and this was no small to-do. After it happened, I cried, inconsolable, for over an hour. I dreaded waking up the next morning and realizing that this is what I had done, unchanged and unchangeable, for the rest of my life.

The next morning, I went to my expert dentist and he bonded the tooth. Since then it has been shaved to (what I call) a snaggle (very very very small square of tooth) to prepare for it's permanent porcelain jacket, and had the first half of a root canal. However, if you looked at it you would have absolutely no idea there was something wrong beneath the plastic tooth-shaped coating.

But I know. And when I think about the tooth I lost in a second, the beautiful, frankly enormous, tooth that had been pushed and prodded into its proper place through years of orthodontistry....

I am filled with an incredible sense of loss.