Oh for Christ's Teeth

And there is another thing Mom is missing, though not nearly so exciting. At least not for her. It is for me. She’d probably have a cow, so just as well. I began Invisalign treatment last week. I never had braces as a child. Never had anything a typical teenager would have. Whatever everyone else got, I must have gotten in the wrong line. The downside: No boobs until college. Flat as a pancake. No growth spurt until junior year. Short, or as my mother would say, “petite.” No driver’s license until senior year, and my friends would not let me forget that I never did my share of the driving. No job until senior year. Lived on whatever allowance I could get without actually breaking a sweat to help anyone about the house. And then took a humiliating job at a bakery, complete with pink plaid jumper. The upside: Charlotte had a retainer. Joe had full braces, top and bottom. I had nothing but wisdom teeth removed. A walk in the park from a vanity standpoint. Charlotte hated her skin problems. Joe’s skin should have been in CDC archives for World’s Worst Pizza Face. I had no issues. Nary a zit. Charlotte dieted. Joe was a chubbins. I was a toothpick and ate everything at said bakery by the pound. But now, the paybacks have begun. My metabolism came to a grinding halt when I was 31. I can’t exactly polish off the whole cheesecake and still expect to fit in my jeans the next day anymore. Being a brunette, I get to wax where my friends the blondes do not even have to imagine waxing. And it is a fallacy that waxing makes the hair grow back thinner and weaker. No, it does not. And my teeth are shifting. Like my mothers did. And no offense to Mom, I don’t want her teeth. No matter where they go. Not that they were ever perfect, (she was a Depression Era middle child in a family of 11 children so orthodontia was not a possibility much less a priority) but they did go on the move in her 50s. To the point where she just caved and got dentures. I have only her experience to go on and assume my teeth will do similarly. I have no idea what my Dad’s teeth would have done. He had dentures by this age. In fact, he had dentures my entire life…only I didn’t know it. I thought he had beautiful teeth. Truth is he had all of his teeth pulled (for reasons that have never been adequately explained to me) when he was a young man in the Navy. God only knows the story behind that. And better yet, he never told us. It wasn’t until he had surgery when I was in my 30s and Charlotte and I went to visit him post-operatively. The nurse told us to wait a minute. He wasn’t ready for visitors. He wanted to put in his teeth. Say what? We looked at her like she was nuts. “Oh no. There must be some mistake. We are here to see our father.” We said his name and she checked the chart. Yep, right guy. Right room. Right bed. So we visit and make him comfy, check on his pain management, etc. and say goodbye – and I am immediately on the phone to our mother. And that’s when she spilled it. He had dentures when she met him. Good thing we never had to identify his carcass in the morgue. “Nope. Can’t be. Looks like him. Looks like his shorty pajamas. But our Dad has all his own teeth, and they are gorgeous.” Oh, the secrets families keep.