Throughout my entire childhood, one of the things I feared most was losing teeth. I don’t think it is uncommon for children to dislike the idea of losing teeth. Watching something that you thought was a permanent part of you drop like deadweight into your palm is alarming, even with all of the warnings your parents may give you. And what’s more is that for the next week, give or take, you rub your tongue over the freshly exposed gum, the empty coffin of your old friend, until a new one magically grows back.
Absolutely horrifying.
I did hate losing teeth for all of the most common reasons. But most prominently, I hated the idea of getting old. I couldn’t understand why people celebrated losing teeth, and I certainly could not understand the concept of a “tooth fairy,” who compensates you after graverobbing. Only old people lose their teeth. I’m not ready to lose teeth until I’m 95. I would think to myself, crossing my arms in dismay over my chest.
I can barely remember anything from early childhood, but the memory of losing my first tooth burns clear like the hottest sliver of a flame scorching into my mind. Once it started getting too wobbly to ignore, I held my tooth in its place in my gums. I avoided eating and even drinking at all costs.
Please don’t leave me. You stay right here, in my mouth.
Despite my efforts, and my unnoticed pleading, it inevitably fell out into the palm of my hand, like an acorn out of its mothering oak in the middle of my kindergarten art class. I sat, staring at it. Saliva fell from the corners of my mouth. I froze like a deer in headlights. I swallowed hard, tasting the bitter sweet red pain that I had only tasted from attempts at soothing papercuts and hand scrapes after playing.
I couldn’t help but feel as if I had just lost a part of myself. Maybe that’s because I did.
I frantically tried to push the tooth back into my mouth. I wrestled with my gums, pulling them apart, tirelessly attempting to get the tooth to stick back into its place, where it belonged. I examined the root of the tooth, looking for the exact angle I could hold it at so it would lock back into place, like the final piece of a puzzle. I felt helpless. The weary effects of aging were plaguing me, as I knew they would, and I could do nothing to stop it. And all at the grand age of 5.
5 years later, I cried on my 10th birthday. My first year of double-digits, and a hard goodbye to single-digits forever. Coincidentally, I lost my last baby tooth that day as well. It didn’t feel as traumatizing that time, and part of me almost felt ready to say goodbye. I was certainly ready to part ways with the so-called “tooth fairy.”
Today, I am 18 with my own car, my own phone, my own job, and all of my adult teeth. I’ve learned how to hide my fear of aging, but I never stop thinking about it.
Sometimes I miss my baby teeth.
I never thought of losing baby teeth this way but have had many a nightmare about the loss of adult teeth. Indeed there is something grounding about teeth in a sense of wholeness and self. Thanks for expressing a bit of that!