A Tooth Fell Out of My Mouth, and I'm Not Six

Or Fear of Aging

This is pretty close to what my actual tooth looks like now. (Photo by Ozkan Guner on Unsplash)

If you want to follow This Is Not What I Expected, but you don’t check email routinely, I recommend the Substack App. You can set alerts for when I publish something (or not) and follow along without having to face the horror of 1,526 unread emails. Now on to a different horror, teeth…

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Yesterday, a chunk of one of my back molars fell out in my mouth. I was sitting in the back seat of my mom’s car, her and my aunt in the front, and my fourteen-year-old beside me. As soon as I felt the hard piece mixed into the gum I was chewing, I knew it was tooth material.

It was surreal. It was a stress dream come to life, so much so, I wondered for a full minute if maybe I was actually asleep. I felt a dull horror at the stained yet shiny, cream-colored chunk in my hand. It didn’t hurt, but I could feel the jagged hole against the inside of my cheek. I still can, right now.

“I guess we know what you’ll be doing tomorrow,” my aunt said, implying a day spent on dental work. And we went about our business. I kept looking at the chunk, rolling it around in my hand to feel it’s hardness, to convince myself it was really there. I came home and told the rest of my family, to the same end. They expressed sympathy, and then we watched the Academy Awards. After all, a tiny chunk of one of the 28 teeth in my mouth really isn’t that big of a deal.

But in my head, the horror was dull only because I actively kept it distant, at bay. It was a harbinger.

Will I lose all of my teeth, the way a dentist ten years ago predicted I would? The one who tried to send me to an expensive periodontist, not covered by my insurance, for a painful bone graft to my gums? Will I end up with a full set of implants like my dad and one of my aunts?

When I was in my 20s, didn’t floss, and hadn’t been to the dentist in five years, I developed 11 cavities that had to be filled. (I did not win the genetic lottery in the tooth enamel department.) While filling the first three, the dentist got impatient waiting for my mouth to numb. When he started to drill and pain shot through my nerves, I grabbed his hand and wrenched it out of my mouth involuntarily as tears sprang to my eyes. “Are you sure you feel pain and not just pressure?” is what he said.

By the time all 11 cavities were filled, I had developed a visceral and significant aversion and anxiety to dental work. Hence the horror when I consider the procedures I’d have to endure for a full set of fake teeth.

There was a more existential aspect to the horror as well. I wondered if this was the beginning of the end. A visible marker, that chunk of tooth I could hold in my hand, of my disintegration. Aging. Getting older, actively, acutely, right now.

Fear, aging. They go together, and the meat that makes up that fear is solid and shored up on all sides. Fear of becoming irrelevant in our youth-worshipping society. Irritation at sliding rapidly down the slope of conventional sexual attractiveness at a time in my life when peri-menopausal hormones make my own sexual desires so much more vigorous. Shored up by urgency. There are so many things I want to do, to write, and why do I spend my time playing word games on my phone instead? By the dread of losing my intellect. My memory is already worse than it used to be, as is my hearing. How long before I have trouble thinking?

Largely, I refute these fears to myself. I do actually like getting older. I may not remember a logistical conversation I had with my kids two days ago, but overall, I am much wiser than the 20-something version of myself. Less apt to be defensive and reactionary. More insightful and introspective. More secure in who I am. Better at making friends and much better at being a friend. Getting old, as I am fond of saying when people bitch about it like I did in the last paragraph, beats the alternative.

And then a tooth falls out of my mouth, and the fear blossoms from its sleeping place and runs around in circles in my brain with its hair on fire and its ass catching. It is in full-on panic mode.

But because I am near 50 instead of 25, I can accept that fear without letting it take over. I can let it in the room without letting it run the show. But I will think about it for three days straight — that’s the lot of having a writer’s brain. That’s why, my cherished readers, you get an entire post about one tiny piece of enamel that I still have in a sandwich baggie on my desk.

Maybe I’ll bury that shard in the backyard once I manage to let go of it. Maybe I should bury all the kids’ teeth in the backyard, too — the ones I started keeping in a little butterfly box ever since my oldest lost his first one in kindergarten. My uterus isn’t in my body anymore, and I didn’t try to keep that.

Sorry, uterus, by the way. I don’t know if I did the right thing having you excised, but I know I wasn’t very respectful about it. Problematic as you could be, you carried two heathy babies to term, an act that helped make me whole after years of trying. I should’ve given you more consideration. Had a funeral or baked you a cake. I guess. That’s weird, isn’t it?

I can’t end this essay, because I don’t know the ending. I have, I hope, just begun to get old. If I’m lucky and mindful (but mostly lucky) I’ll get to experience the adventure of aging for quite a lot more years. I guess the bottom line is, scary as it can be, I still resoundingly pick getting old over NOT getting old. Gene Hackman died recently at 95, living in Santa Fe with his wife and dogs. I’d like to make it at least that long.

And so yes, the fear is there. It will no doubt poke its head up repeatedly as I droop, sag, and develop more aches and pains over the years. As I maybe lose more teeth. But I am wise and will get wiser still. I know a lot and will know even more in 10, 20, 50 more years. I can’t control how society sees me, but I like myself quite a lot these days, so even if old age ends up being lonely from time to time, I can appreciate my own company.

If there is a fate to tempt, let me go on record to say that I do not want to die for a very long time. YOU HEAR THAT, FATES? If you exist, please don’t mistake my fear of aging as a death wish. Amen.