My Teeth Again.

Here's something I can write about. This week, I went back to the dentist, or I should say the hygienist, and she finished cleaning my teeth. And I have an appointment on Thursday with an oral surgeon to have one pulled because the filling has fallen out and it's a wisdom tooth and the hole is close to the nerve so it's easier and cheaper to just yank it. I can't describe the joy this brings me, to know that I'll soon have all the filthy, stinky rotten stuff out of my mouth.

I also feel a twinge of sadness about having a permanent part of my body removed. (Not so permanent, after all.) Being here with my aging parents, I've been thinking so much about getting older in terms of what you give up, the accumulation of loss: the people around you who die one by one, the activities you can no longer manage, the shrinking of your zone of travel, the narrowing of possibility in general, and things like bone loss, memory loss, vision and hearing loss, loss of elasticity in your skin. And the always accelerating contraction of the number of years you have left. All of it.

It's just a damn tooth, but that's how it starts!