Willard and Dale, August 1914

     Yesterday morning as I was brushing my teeth, something dropped into the sink with an ominous CLUNK.  I quickly blocked the drain and rescued one of my teeth – a molar encased in an old, but still shiny, porcelain crown.  My first thought was of the classic Patsy Cline song, “I Fall to Pieces.”
     Hard on the heels of that thought was, “Shit!  It’s Saturday, the beginning of the weekend, and I won’t be able to even contact the dentist till Monday.”  Then I realized that there was no pain and that, unless I smiled really broadly, the gap could not be seen.  Things could have been far worse.
     Forty-eight years ago, in August of 1962, I was in an automobile accident and broke the steering wheel with my mouth.  That was a time when things were, indeed, far worse.  I lost nine front teeth – five uppers and four lowers – plus a lot of jawbone.
     I spent one afternoon a week for the next year commuting from Hayward to San Francisco to the University of California’s Dental College.  That was my first year of teaching and I trained myself to talk and smile without opening my mouth much.  Even so, I think the kids thought I might be a witch.   So… what is one puny molar, anyway?
    Another thought that crossed my mind was of my mother and my uncle Willard.  Born just eleven months apart, they felt sometimes referred to themselves as “twins.”  As they aged, one of their first questions of one another when they got together was always:  “Do you still have all your teeth?”  The answer was in the affirmative up until Willard’s death in 1999.
     My mother lived another ten years and did, finally, lose some of her teeth.  But by the time that happened she was twenty years older than I am now.  And, just two years before she died, she had a fall and lost several of her front teeth, ruining her gorgeous smile.  Fortunately, perhaps, dementia blurred her understanding of that reality and, though she looked a little goofy when she laughed, the twinkle in her eyes remained unchanged.
     Again, I say, what’s a little molar?  It’s all a matter of perspective.