I went from riding in the creek with my large assed but sensible buckskin mare Maggie, to going to get a root canal.
Who the hell signs up to be a dentist. Who.
I went in because after months of begging I was finally scoring this shitty prize of getting my tooth fixed. I kept thinking it's okay, just remember the creek. Pretend all these faces in masks around you aren't there. Remember the ducks flying off the silent water in front of Mags.
This is impossible to do. I mean you can grasp a second of beauty but then the specialized dentist surgeon is rotating a series of tiny chainsaws in your jaw and all you can feel is the battering.
She psyched me out. When she first came in she said oh look at your eyes, I wish I had blue eyes. I forgot to be scared for a second. She was a stranger in a van offering me candy on my bike. I didn't see behind her back she a shot full of novocaine in a gigantic needle, just waiting to stab it into the thin skin decorating the roof of my mouth.
I looked at her brown eyes and then I closed my eyes and after the novocaine, it was quiet for about ten minutes. They were doing other things to other people's faces in other places.
Then suddenly, like a tsunami, I hear machines and people swooping into my tiny closet room, and like a clown car my face is mega crammed with a mini trampoline, ten people's hands, and the sound of fracking. They're fracking my face.
Think of the ducks. I saw the ducks flying off.
They tip me so far down that my head is almost touching the floor. I feel all my fluids, like my bladder, and my brain, slosh to the top of my body. It's kind of funny if they then weren't chopping down a forest of tooth root in my usually private by invitation only mostly gentle mouth area.
The clowns hammered and banged and dragged tools on carts in and out while I squeezed my eyes shut and focused on pretending to be a helpless cute ape hanging upside down in front of masked strangers.
They took several pictures, draping me in the heavy robes and I'm sure making a peace sign as we selfied.
Then they said ok done. There's a snapping of rubber gloves, my eyes are still closed tight like a museum at midnight.
They whooshed out of the room.
The one guy left in my emotion rubble said oh you can leave, unless you want to help me clean up.
He tipped the chair up to regular level and I unpinned the pink drool towel they left on my chest and wobbily got to my feet. You better not chew on that side it's pretty soft til you get a crown you better get that within a few weeks.
I was dialing my dentist while walking woozily toward the front, I better get that happening I didn't even fully believe I was going to get in here to get this part done after months of trying so I certainly didn't preplan the rest yet.
There's a prescription you better pick that up they're saying and I'm looking at the guy like I feel so violated how is everyone acting normal. I leave a message for my real dentist and spell out my name like they don't know me even though I've been going there for about 20 years and I bring eggs from the chickens so they call me the egg lady. I didn't spell that out. I forgot I was anyone, they fracked away my spirit.
I walked to my car feeling like everything changed and my face was starting to hurt and wait didn't I do this so my face would not hurt? And why do I need a prescription that means not going home right away and now I have a soft tooth filling to worry about and all I like to eat are carrots and popcorn.
I never have to do that again. That part is good. Why is everything so much scarier when you're a mom almost done with the basics of mothering, almost at the finish line of throwing children out into the world. Then you look back at yourself, like the tattered american flag in the revolutionary war, you're still holding the damn flag but it looks so shitty from all the battles.
But I still have the flag though, dammit. Look at that victory. And the ducks.
The ducks were there.
