Too early. Laundry. Dentist. Work. Mhhhhh-ugh (That's that 'unhappy' sound you made when your mother woke you up for school.)
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Rage is asleep still. So is JohnCam.. well, waking. And San Francisco is in darkness (reXcam). P-town is hibernating.
The heat is opressive; like JohnCam, I have steam-heat, and it's either sweltering and I open the windows. Or it's freezing, because I opened the windows.
I get kinda panicky when I have to take care of myself, like doing laundry and going to the dentist. Or maybe it's some kind of agoraphobia; an anxiety around presenting myself at the dentist's office. I don't mean panicky like running around screaming, but panicky inside, where presence lives. Inside, where the little boy plays, and talks softly, and watches.
Time to go.
I met my dentist when I had to have a rotten molar pulled. I didn't care about my teeth--actually, I didn't care about me, and my teeth suffered. And the way I met Dr. Joan Courtman was when she pulled the last molar I had left on the lower right side. It was a Saturday, late afternoon, summertime. My agony had been escalating for two days. This particular tooth ached from time to time, but the pain always subsided in a day. Not anymore would it retreat. I needed it yanked.
Her office was down the street, so I called her at home with my plea. After about an hour, I called again and left a message; "I'm waiting for you to call me back." We had miscommunicated, and the whole time, she'd been waiting for me at her office. When she did get home she called me.
Now, sometimes it doesn't count for much, but caring--no matter what--is the best thing we can do for one another. She was pissed, but she put it aside, and she came back, again, to her office down the street from me. By the time I saw her, she was warm and smiling. I don't know what I pulled her away from, and she knew it didn't matter.
It was a difficult extraction, so little of the tooth remained above the gum. Most of it had decayed away, and there would be trouble if it broke-up before she got it out. For a long time, all that had been visible to me was the dark cavity, which kept getting deeper, and which finally brought me to her office. Three times she had to stop to numb my jaw more, but she never hesitated, and she never ignored my need. And she got it out, in one piece.
I looked at it one last time, and I was amazed. It was all shiney-clean and white below the gumline. From the outside the roots looked pristine. The way it's all supposed to be.
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