From 30,000 Feet

It was a day. I’d just had my third root canal since March 24, when I had my first on Molar 19. The second, on Molar 20, followed March 29. Those two teeth were crowned April 14, and that was unexpectedly delight-free, as well. Now it was May 10, and I was in for my fourth multi-hour session in The Chair, and on this beautiful balmy afternoon I slunk into Jim Murrin’s office like a yaller street dog, my heretofore cheery mien dissolved. I was thoroughly done with numbing and needles and pain, with shots of epinephrine (or whatever it is that numbs my jaw and makes my heart race) and the wasp-sting and giant bumblebee drone of drills inside my head. I was done with latex mouth dams and fighting back the sudden panic that I couldn’t swallow, cough or breathe. I was almost ready to cry for the gas of oblivion, but pride held me back. Not sure who I’m trying to impress any more, but there it is.

I don’t have bad teeth. I have great big, beautiful teeth, and I love them. This is not their fault. The problem is that my cavities were treated in the late 1960’s, when, as Jim explained, the conventional wisdom (or dumbness) was to carve out a whole lotta tooth around every cavity, and fill that great hole with silver. There. All done. Fixed it. This weakens the tooth structure, and eventually what’s left of the tooth is going to dry out and crack around those gigantic silver fillings. Eventually, apparently, is in the spring of one’s 57^th year.  As I understand it, eventually comes quickly if you grind your teeth in your sleep, eat kettle corn, muesli with dried apricot bombs, or almonds, to name just a few of my favorite things that have brought such joy and drained my bank account.

I find myself thinking about primitive dentistry. About cavemen, and what happened when their teeth cracked. Which they must have, given that there was the inevitable pebble in the roots, fruit or flesh. Dental pain is intractable and life-altering. What did they do when it struck?? They didn’t wait in a little anteroom full of alluring magazines to be put out of their pain. They didn’t have pliers or anything resembling them. How on God’s green earth did they pull each other’s teeth? Bash them out with rock and ice skates, Castaway style? I shudder to think of them suffering, perhaps for years. And I feel lucky that I, in my figurative silk suit, can go to Dr. Murrin and say "Please put me out of pain." I’ll sit still as I can. When you see my thumbs twiddling, or my feet describing little circles, you’re hitting pay dirt.

This array of magazines in the waiting room definitely helped, for it speaks volumes. Thank you, sweet Ida, for leading me here to this magical endopaintist, this paintodontist, who loves plein air, cityscapes, mountains, beaches, light, music, birds and my books, too. Who calls as I’m making the 2 ½ hour drive home to make sure I’m OK. I’m sure it was your doing that guided me here. What did DOD know of endodontists? I can recall my dad going to the dentist maybe three times in my youth. It was Ida who flossed twice a day, bought us all electric toothbrushes (with cords!) and spent far too many of her mornings in the chair at the dental school in downtown Richmond, returning silent and shell-shocked. She knew from tough dental work.

Close-up of central issue. This is an article about Jim Murrin's alter ego as a plein air painter. See his work at http://www.jimmurrinart.com

 Dad had enormous teeth in a robust jaw, which he passed on to me. He’d throw his head back and bare his molars so we could see all that gold. We liked to say that he could chew soup. And he did! We’d laugh to hear his choppers clop-clopping on Mom’s fresh tomato soup, islands of Longhorn cheddar melting in it, a to-die-for summer treat. Clop, clop, clop. When he and Ida were first married she made him a pecan pie, which is kind of like making a peanut butter and honey sammitch for a 200-pound black bear. She took off a little piece off the pie and offered it to Dale. And he bit down on it and by accident her thumb, too, and she said she was sure he’d bitten it clean off. She never hand-fed that man again.

And now I’m remembering Dad slicing things, summer sausage or cheese or apples, and offering bits to us on the tip of his pocket knife, which was always well-sharpened and likely never truly washed. He’d stick it into the dirt to clean it. Dirt, he liked to say, is an excellent cleanser. To him I likely owe my healthy stable of antibodies. I loved the little thrill of danger I felt when I picked a treat with a delicate bite off the end of that knife. That’s probably how the ancestral Zickefooses fed each other, no fingers in the way. I’m wondering where my first pocketknife is now, the one with sides made of furrowed antler, and a wolf-head insignia in the silver base. Dad gave it to me, and I’d give the world to pry it open again, swivel the blade between thumb and forefinger and send it spinning into a perfect stuck landing in the lawn, the way he showed me to do.

E.L. Doctorow said, “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Lately, I sit down to write about, for instance, the beauty of West Virginia in a rainy spring (my last post, which turned out to be about teeth) or garlic mustard (this post, which turned out to be about teeth), and what I get is teeth. With sprinklings of mortality, and Ida and Dale. I write about what’s on my mind, I guess. My son, once a nearly-spherical babe with white duck fuzz hair, has passed 6’, spends time building muscle, drawing amazing characters, fussing with his perfect ‘do, and driving himself to school. My daughter lives in Maine, is coming home for a couple of weeks this spring, and then spending the summer working at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. My much-too-beloved dog is growing old before my eyes. And look! so am I. What do you know.

 I don’t mean to sound forlorn, self-pitying, creaky or any of that, because I’m not. I’m riding this fresh and twisty bronco with everything I’ve got, and enjoying it immensely (well, all but the…you know). I’ve almost completely missed spring migration in Ohio; Chet and I haven’t had time for a good run since books started arriving in late March; but I’ve got a new book out, it’s got hard covers and gatefold pages and it weighs 3 ½ pounds! I’ve sold a pack of them, and people seem to like it. I get to zip around giving talks and meeting people, smiling and signing it. I’ve seen spring come on in Massachusetts and West Virginia and I’ve caught snippets of Ohio’s oriole, tanagers and bobolinks out the car windows as I flit around. In the one or two days at a time that I’m home, I plant and weed, piling straw around the tender peppers and tomatoes, and promise my gardens I’ll be back in late May. The house looks like several suitcase bombs went off in it—Bill’s traveling even more than I. I care, but not enough to do anything more than unpack, wash it all, and pack it up for the next trip. Thank God Liam can drive now, and is giving his rapidly-growing knees a rest from track this spring, because his far-flung parents would have missed every meet.

Me and Neka Roundy, Great Salt Lake Bird Festival mastermind and gracious host. Taken this morning, May 12. 2016

 I’m headed to Utah now to see what’s flying through there, take some field trips and give a couple of talks at the Great Salt Lake Bird Festival. I’ve shipped 30 copies of Baby Birds out here, and I hope hard I sell them all.  Being strapped into a small blue and gray seat is the only time I get to write these days. In fact, I just now yanked my laptop screen back from disaster, courtesy of the guy in front of me who, two hours into the flight to Denver, suddenly and swiftly drove his seatback into my space. Gotta love it. Yeah, I love it; love 35 minutes standing sock-footed in TSA processing, love the 36-carb pack of blueberry cookies that are my breakfast; love boarding position C-25 on a Southwest flight, which sent me to the why-me seat hard up against the restrooms, not breathing deeply. It’s all so glamorous, and I remind myself that it’s the life I asked for. But I treasure the time to buckle myself in, flick on the headlights, grab the wheel, and see where we wind up going.

Salt Lake City from Ensign Peak

I realized with an inordinate amount of glee that these pincushiony things are the seedpods of itty bitty alpine geraniums--the cranes' bills. Not an inch high, hugging the rocky slopes of Ensign Peak. Whoa!!

Not in Ohio anymore. Here be Lazuli bunting, black-headed grosbeak, vesper sparrow, ravens, magpies!!

The Way It Is

 Not sure I've let the blog idle for this long before...can it be 17 days since my last post?

The world spins madly on.

I had to smile at a comment left on my last post, from Anonymous.  Anonymous is sometimes not very nice to me, but I liked this one. Made me feel missed.

Ok Julie,

...where the frickyfrack are you?!...   :-( 

Well, let's see. I took a left turn at Beset and wound up in Fraught. Re-routed, drove around in curlicues and ended up with a cloud of steam coming out from under my hood just outside Overwhelmed. Ever been there?

http://terryborder.com

It all started when I gave seven talks in 8 days, trying to maximize my time in the Boston area, April 23-May 1. I drove alone for 2430 miles, all of them in pouring rain. I had a most marvelous time and showed a lot of people a good time, too. I saw two of my sisters and a niece, spent precious wonderful time with Phoebe and Corey and Hodge and John,  saw my artist friends at my show opening, made it to Mt. Auburn Cemetery five times in 8 days (!!), ate too much,  saw many many tulips and daffodils, and gave a talk every day. Practically sold out of books, and came home with money. Beautiful! The way it should be.

I got home on Monday night, May 2, and by that Wednesday I had the car unloaded, all the laundry done and was packing the car solid to the ceiling again with books and gear for my trip to the New River Birding and Nature Festival in West Virginia. This would be the 14th keynote in a row I've given for this festival, each one of them different. And on Saturday night Bill and I and an assemblage of professional musicians hurriedly put together would provide three hours of very fun music.

Once again, probably more than should ever be packed into a Subaru. Batman sitting, ready to roll, between the front seats.

So I'm driving down to the festival on Thursday afternoon with Liam and Chet and I ask my son to hand me some Quaker Oat Squares because I'm famished. Instead he asks if we can open a bag of popcorn. And before you know it I'm eating it, dammit, knowing I shouldn't, and I'm being careful but the bag is getting down to seeds and sticks, and a single old maid has found its way like a tiny smartbomb to a molar on the left side of my mouth, the opposite side from the two new crowns I just got in mid-April, and there is a terrible cracking sound and suddenly I am cursing and drooling and holding a shiny little quarter of my tooth in my hand. And that little pearly item, my friends, is another $2400 down the drain, the third time in less than a month that this has happened. You do the math. I can't stand to.

I do not like getting root canals. I do not like getting crowns. I do not like the sight, sound, or scent of needles and drills, gutta percha or epoxy, and whatever else it takes to keep some remnant of my own teeth in my head and functional. Every cent I've made in the last two months of frantic bookselling and shipping and talking has gone straight into my mouth. This has necessitated a sort of mental hauling about, to where I'm OK with working like a freaking stevedore, hoisting, packing and shipping or hauling, multiple times, more than 600 copies of my book (each one of which weighs 3.5 lb.), just so I can afford to  repair my precious, suddenly obsolete and crumbling teeth. 

As a side benefit, I suddenly and viscerally understand why so many people who live in my depressed area of Ohio have so few teeth. Because if you can't afford to pay to have root canals and crowns, your only alternative is to have them pulled. So when they crack around 45-year-old silver fillings, they get pulled, because most of my neighbors don't happen to have an extra $2400 lying around for such luxuries as fake porcelain crowns on pulpless teeth. 

Ever have a song just pop up and run through your head? I don't know if this is true for everyone, but the ones that cycle in my brain generally have something to tell me. The song on Repeat Play in my head as I struggle to accept my reality,  figure out how to effect this attitudinal hauling about:

 Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is." 

It came out the summer my mother lost her eyesight to macular degeneration; the summer my dad's hypertension got so bad he would just turn red and boil over; the summer we rolled along to Iowa with me, suddenly in charge and surprised to be behind the wheel at 28.  On that trip, it sank in on me like a dagger that neither one of my heretofore reliable parents was roadworthy any more, and it was up to me to take care of them now. That my mother, who kept saying she didn't like the new prescription she'd just gotten in her glasses, was entering a kind of personal visual hell that would rob her of her freedom to drive, take from her the simple but vital pleasure of reading herself to sleep; of joyfully walking three brisk miles a day; of seeing or recognizing her own children's faces. I wound up driving them to and from Virginia to Iowa for what would be our last trip together. It was the summer of 1986. I didn't know it was our last trip together, of course; one is rarely given to know such things.  But it was big for me, this sudden overturning of the iceberg of my childhood.  My parents were suddenly, irreversibly mortal, in need of my help, and looking down a road they'd never wanted to see. How could this be?

I remember "The Way It Is" and Hornsby's "Mandolin Rain" coming up on the radio again and again, and I'd turn it up when they did, because Mom and Dad liked them both. And I gloried in the unexpected pleasure of their liking music I liked, and I listened hard to the lyrics as the miles clicked away in the ta-dunk, ta-dunk of Illinois and Indiana's crappy highway pavement. And we sped at 70 mph across the state I didn't know I'd adopt as my own only six years later, when I married a man I had yet to meet. 

Standing in line, marking time Waiting for the welfare dime 

Cause they can't buy a job

A man in a silk suit hurries by, catches the poor old lady's eye

Just for fun he says, "Get a job."

I think Bruce Hornsby is in my head so I remember that not everyone can begin to afford to save their teeth. I think he's telling me that I'm the man in the silk suit here, and I'd better be thankful I can even consider having this level of dental work done. I don't think it's an accident that the song running through my head is one my parents and I shared. 

And I don't think it's an accident that I found, by what seemed like a blind online search, an endodontist who is also an artist and bird lover, who came to my talk in Columbus; who gave my books to his wife and daughter; who, when I texted him, called me right back as I drove and wept, peeled me gently off the ceiling, and said he'd fit me in Tuesday, fix that tooth so I can push on to another weekend-long festival commitment in Utah on Thursday.  

I think Dad put the song in my head, and sweet longsuffering Ida, who also loved popcorn and spent so much time in the chair getting her teeth repaired, found Dr. Murrin and pointed me toward him. And then she grabbed him by the ear and whispered that he had someone special here, and he'd better take good care of her.

 I can't prove it, but I don't need to, because I know this to be true.

The Silver (Amalgam) Lining

Six days without a post from me? Unheard of. Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don't.

Let's see. Do I have an excuse? Not that I need one; we bloggers blog or we don't, as life commands.

Nobody told us when we were chewing ice cubes and jawbreakers and grinding our teeth all night that those fillings we had done at age 13 were going to fail, fail, fail.  Well, actually I remember my mom begging me not to chew ice cubes. She did it herself and suffered the consequences, sitting for hours in a chair at the Dental School in downtown Richmond, and coming back traumatized and silent. God only knows what was done to her in the 1970's; the students learned on her.  I thought that was something that only happened to old people, that would never happen to me. Now I wish so hard that I could go back and give a long hug to my 50-year-old mom, put a cool cloth on her forehead, and pull the curtains, ask her what she needs. In the solipsism of youth, I never could have grasped that my beautiful big white teeth were going to fracture, too. That, like my mother, I'd learn to drink by sucking warm water delicately over my tongue like a pigeon; that if even tepid water contacted one of those fractured molars, I'd gasp and pirouette around the kitchen with my hands over my face. That my kids would stand, stricken, watching me, but not imagining that could ever happen to them. And maybe it won't. They don't chew ice.  Jawbreakers are unknown to them, as is soda of any kind. Their perfect young teeth were sealed as soon as they came in; they've never had a cavity--never had a cavity!!

Excuse me. May I have a do-over with my teeth?And while I'm at it...

Like my kids, I never divined that  someday I'd hurt so badly and for so long (since December) that when I finally realized that those teeth were cracked all the way to the root, and they weren't going to get better, and found an endodontist who would see me in a timely fashion (all the ones in my area were either on vacation or offering appointments in May) it didn't matter that he was 2 1/2 hours away. I would look forward with joy to climbing in that chair, lying back and trying to relax.

By chance and synchronicity and pure magic I found the most awesome endodontist, and I'm convinced my little voice (and his five-star rating) helped me pick him out of the online directory. I walked into his office to see Plein Air and Audubon on the glass table. There was no television in the waiting room. And that no television was not set on Faux. There was a bird feeder outside the window--in an office park--and he had the right seed mix for downy woodpeckers, Carolina chickadees and house finches! There was a field guide on the windowsill! The music on his system was just exactly right, stuff I knew, could hum along to in a muffled, throaty, forlorn way behind my bright blue rubber dental dam.  And when I met him, he was warm and empathetic and handsome and also--get this-- a badass plein aire oil painter. He's in the office two or three days a week and painting on the other days. It's refreshing to meet someone who has figured out how to do Life. To commit to his art and his work equally. And boy does it show.

You must see his work.  Do go. But come back for the rest of the story.

Here's a teaser: 

"Grandview," a Columbus neighborhood. I'm sure the title's a bit ironic. Holy smokes, he paints. Three days a week, he paints. He paints for keeps. From jimmurrinart.com

Jim Murrin did what he could with my two cracked molars, which is to say he reamed 'em out and filled 'em and now I'm waiting to get them crowned, and I can eat again, and drink cold--Cold!!-- water without shrieking. Grateful doesn't begin to describe how I feel about that. 

The  Little Voice was speaking loudly when, in Whipple on the morning of my first appointment, knowing absolutely nothing about him other than that he was a good endodontist, I packed a copy of Baby Birds in my bag to give to him. I had a feeling he'd appreciate it. I had no idea then how much he'd like it. 

Look at the sky in "Point Cabrillo Light." Look at the light.

Long story short, I feel I've made a friend. And it's odd--I feel I have known him all my life. This is when the past-life stuff kicks in, at least for me. Maybe I've known him all my life, in some other life. There will be times when you feel that you've been guided by instinct to someone's door. But maybe something larger is guiding you. Some higher power is directing your attention in all the right directions. Getting older can suck, for sure. Cracked teeth and crap like that. But finally being inwardly quiet enough that you're able to hear and heed the Little Voice is a beautiful thing. And knowing when to be grateful (always) is everything.

All the while, both pre-and-post root canals, I have been filling orders for Baby Birds, because it is the kind of work one can do while in pain. Writing blogposts, running, taking joy-filled photos,  waxing poetic...not so much. But thanks to Jim I'm pain-free, and coming back.

I am heartened and delighted by your response to the new book. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Lord knows you could get it cheaper elsewhere, but you can't get it signed or Chetpawprinted elsewhere, and you get that; you make the choice to buy your book from me (see right sidebar for order button) and I'm forever in your debt. The orders keep coming in and I am working hard to scratch up the money to buy more books. Thank you! I had thought I would turn around and put the money you're sending me into buying more books, but my old molars had other plans.

I'm determined to make it work. 

I think it was John Lennon who said, "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." 

"Message from Home" by Jim Murrin jimmurrinart.com

Go see Jim's art. He's got some new stuff coming from a trip to Cuba!!