Get the Bit Between My Teeth*
An ode to my wisdom (tooth) & the beautiful new book "The Motherhood Space"
I am feeling a little less wise today. After a couple of weeks of back-and-forth with a new dentist about some pain I was having, I had a wisdom tooth pulled unexpectedly this morning. And when I say unexpectedly, I mean I was so caught off guard by the entire experience, I nearly fainted afterward and the dentist had to call my partner to pick me up for the five-minute walk home. I am not great at on-the-spot decision making and I like to think about things a lot! But this was the third trip to the dentist about the same tooth, and I was told it would eventually have to come out so it might as well be today. Okkkkaaaayyy, I said before my blood pressure skyrocketed.
The actual pulling didn’t hurt as I was numb but the immediacy of the situation and knowing someone is using forceps to pull out your tooth was A LOT. Oh and the sounds. (Apologies for any dentist-trauma triggering!) I was texting with a couple of friends afterward and both of them were shocked at how fast it all happened and without any discussion about making me more comfortable beforehand. Without getting into a long discussion about England’s infuriating two-tier healthcare system, I will say this dentist is NHS and efficiency and speed is definitely a top priority. No time to coddle a 40-something mom! I did however, get a cold compress afterward when I told the dentist I was about to faint. The text chat afterward with one friend turned to how this was another example of how we women are supposed to grin and bear it, accept loss and get on with our day even if we are battered, bruised and bleeding!
I think about teeth and dental stuff probably more than the average person. I have, in the past, had the reoccurring dream of all my teeth falling out. Apparently dreaming about losing teeth symbolizes a loss of control or vulnerability. Go figure. I had a lot of cavities as a kid and the school dentist (we had one of those) loved to shame kids like me. And once you have children, a lot of the early, and sometimes later years, revolve around teeth. Think: “gain a child, lose a tooth”, the loss of baby teeth, tooth-fairy shenanigans, orthodontics. I also write about dental fricatives (th sounds, for example) in my upcoming book and what they mean in the context of linguicism, or discrimination against how someone sounds. And to prove my point further, I couldn’t call this newsletter Like Pulling Teeth because, guess what? I already wrote a newsletter with that title about…teeth!
But maybe today’s event revolving around my now long-lost wisdom tooth was actually great timing. In a case of serendipitous déjà vu, last year, I wrote an essay on how mothers are so often shamed for their children’s dental health and how children are shamed for their language. That essay, along with the words and photographs of so many other brilliant women and mothers is out (or will be in a few weeks in the UK) in the beautiful new book, The Motherhood Space by Gabrielle Nancarrow.
I am sharing a few spreads from the book here with words by Jessica Hart, Eve Rodsky, Andrea O’Reilly, Dr. Rachel Reed and photographs by Becca Crawford & Ilsa Wynne-Hoelscher Kidd. It was an honour to be part of this collection.
I am off to eat some soup and to *get the bit between my teeth*, meaning, to begin to tackle a problem or task in a determined or independent way: cleaning the house, feeding my kids and doing the writing work I was supposed to do today before my unexpected dental drama/trauma.
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