Goodbye to #15

My husband used his favorite flashlight to look in my mouth.

I warned him that where the dentist extracted my upper left molar this afternoon might look bloody. And so, before clicking on his flashlight, he said, “What if I throw up?” He is notoriously weak-kneed when it comes to blood and gore or stories that might imply later blood and gore. For instance, he didn’t want to know the details of how the dentist went about wrenching the molar out of my mouth, instead he regaled me with details about the handyman’s visit while I was gone.

I don’t mind. I just wanted him to look in my mouth and tell me that what I imagined to be a gaping, dripping wound looked okay. He said it looked neat, very clean, with a tiny little clot in the middle. (Is this more information than you usually get about dental care in a blog?) And even though he usually tells me everything is fine or looks fine or will be fine, I believed him, mostly because his description was so surgical and precise.

Marriage is these things. It was always these things but now seems more so.

After the session at the dentist, I walked to a pharmacy next door to buy some ibuprofen. Then realizing we had some at home, I walked around the store, marveling that they sold only over the counter and prescription drugs together with a pretty extensive wine and beer collection. This seems incongruous, though very Milwaukee, and I inspected the wine labels while I waited for my husband to pick me up. He’d texted that he was still talking to the handyman, so I’d have to wait a bit. I looked out the big windows on to the street, wishing for our truck to appear. I wasn’t in pain or upset, but feeling thin and weathered, like I was listing in some very ephemeral way.

“It’s important,” the dentist said, “you’re losing a part of yourself.” This impressed me that she would think about my #15 tooth in this way, but she was right. I thought about this while I waited in the pharmacy with people coming in and out and regarding me as an older lady in a hoodie. And then my husband pulled up in front of the store and we went home.