Diastema

When the dentist labeled the marked gap between my two front teeth as “diastema,” I didn’t quite get it, thinking that he had said diaspora. After the confusion lifted, we both chuckled as I explained to this 38- year-old Mormon dentist what the diaspora was, it too, in its way, a marked gap. Here I am correcting at 69 the diastema between my front top two teeth that I have lived with for decades. My parents never did see to that or perhaps, to be fair, they had  been told that it was non repairable — dentristy in the 40s being in the Stone Age. (When was the last time you heard a dentist say, “rinse.”) In any case I said to the dentist that I didn’t want a chiclet for my two front teeth, they having begun to chip off at the bottom from decades of wear and gnaw. I asked that some space be left in between and the artist he was, the good dentist crafted and carved and sculpted the temporary pair I am wearing today. In fact I will be going to a lab to get a custom shade so that all looks well. Yes, I did use the line from “Marathon Man,” some place during the procedure — “Is it safe?” Of course, the assistant had no idea what we were giggling about, just the usual generation gap — I don’t use all the gizmos thrown at us and she doesn’t watch all the old movies –we are even.

My sense of self required a space between my teeth although for years I personally disliked the gap. So after six decades necessity makes me take care of myself and install two crowns, leaving a slight space to remind me that I am who I am. All those family photographs with my guarded smile is now “rescinded.” I will go to my grave newly reshaped. The earliest photograph of me as a prepubescent was taken by a professonal photographer. And in the smile the front two teeth are missing. I don’t remember if they had fallen out and new growth was coming in. I do dimly recall, very dimly, that I had cut or damaged my two teeth while jumping up and down on a bed with a baby bottle in my right hand; perhaps then. In any case I grew up with a diasthema. Would anything have changed if I had no space between my teeth? Perhaps. However, my father had a space between the same teeth and my son has one as well, but not as marked as was mine. In chatting with the dentist I shared that in classic Freudian dream analysis, the tooth is a penile symbol. He retorted, “Are you telling me I am a homosexual?” I had in no way meant that, but hmmm to his response. And so what?

I have about a week or so to determine if I like the look of these new temporary teeth before I go to the more permanent porcelain set. The space has been reduced and I may ask the good dentist to tinker here and there before the final choice is made. All this is humorous at this point in time and age. It is as if I am entering a new period of life, emerging into newer decades of life, all of which is a delusion. Remarkable, is it not? to keep working on or restoring body parts or even ways of thinking as we move into decline — is this American? is it cultural? And is it a kind of amusing human foible? Reminds me of the old cockers who exercise in the local gym as if they want to be in top condition when they come to die, the unstated mentality of their efforts. I exercise for now and not then, knowing all is wisp and wind. Surely I associate to Dickens, for these are the best of times and the worst of times for me.

So I chose to repair these chipping teeth which were calving like glaciers and endured those infamous shots to the mouth and the grinding away of the teeth I had, enduring the odor of bone being reduced and shaped and configured into stubs which would hold new replacements. Bone gives way to porcelain and I am crowned cosmetically, cautioned not to chew corn or eat taffy, ridiculous admonitions to me in any case. Taffy? I can’t make head or tail of this peculiar event, for I have been repaired and I cannot dole out the consequences of this after so many decades of being who I am. I had to put myself into a painful situation in order to get along dentally. Since I have the early makings of a cataract and the beginning of macular degeneration I wonder what other procedures are in the future. Another definition of the future might be the anxiety one feels in the present and a definition of the past might be the anxiety we live with in the present, like the arithmetical carrying over of a number, for surely life is a seamless flow and flux and change its engine. I end here.