Teeth

The word for today is TEETH. I think about TEETH a lot. I have dreams in which my TEETH are falling out. When I wake up they are all still there. I have worn braces two times in my life, once as an a child and once as an adult. Now I wear a retainer every night so my "fang" does not reappear.

TEETH are the hard individual masses attached to our gums that help us bite and chew food. When I lived in Maine, I used to joke with my girlfriends that I just wanted to go out with a guy who has his own TEETH. My dog has TEETH but she does not bite. When she was a puppy I put my fingers in her mouth and rubbed her gums, so she would get used to the feel of someone's hands in her mouth, so she would let me brush her TEETH or reach in and grab a piece of food or something else that wasn't supposed to be in there. Sometimes I put my fingers in a puppy's mouth; lots of puppies have really sharp TEETH.

When babies or animals are TEETHing they need to grind the growing masses against something hard to ease their pain. Babies have pacifiers, TEETHing rings, non-toxic chew toys, thumbs (not so good); animals get bones, chew toys. They find wooden legs that hold up tables or chairs, shoes and other items that have their owners' scent (not so good). They need something to work with so the tooth can emerge from the gum, come into its own and do its job. The tooth needs some kind of resistance to ease its pain. The tooth needs to grow up (or down as the case may be).

My father is getting six new TEETH, dental implants on the bottom gum. He has little TEETH, anything little (or not "normal" sized) is seen as a defect in my family. It's costing him lots of money, and time and aggravation and discomfort, to get these implants. The small ground down TEETH were extracted and a temporary bridge was put in. A couple of months later the gums were prepared to accept the implants, but he still has to wear the temporary bridge for another four months. My father is 80 years old. "I don't know if he would've done this if he knew how involved it was," my mother tells me on the phone. "The whole process is going to take almost a year." But I can't imagine my father with false TEETH; I can't imagine him without TEETH. I can't imagine him without power or competence.

What is it that gives someone, something, an action, an idea TEETH. If an idea has legs, it will travel and move forward, but if an idea has TEETH it has power, grip, it will take hold, it will cut through nonsense. I want my life to have TEETH. I want to be strong and stable; I want to cut through all the nonsense, taste it, digest it, and then be rid of it. I want to cleanse my palate with a little sorbet and then be ready for the next course.