Undesired Change (Is There Any Other Kind?), Aches, Pains, Untimely Death and Lost Love

My three least favorite physical sensations that don’t technically cause pain are having someone grasp my tongue with a paper towel, having a paper towel rubbed on my teeth, and, in particular, having air blown on my teeth. Two of these highly objectionable experiences occur, of course, at the same place: the dentist’s.

The only time I’ve experienced having paper towel rubbed on my teeth was when I did it myself when I was about four. The thought of it still makes me shudder.

Another thing I did at about that age was to lick a frozen iron railing. It was during winter, on the front porch of our house, which was in Ann Arbor. I can’t remember if I was able to extricate myself or if my mother rushed out and rescued me.

One of my fillings came out several months ago, and again quite recently. When it was fixed the first time, so much air was blown on my poor teeth that I decided I would not undergo another such repair without general anesthesia.

I saw my dentist last week for a regular cleaning and was extremely pleased when he said I could leave the filling unfixed. It’s not really bothering me, unless I accidentally poke it with a toothpick. That was great news, because I wasn’t sure he was going to go for the general anesthesia idea. He’s probably not licensed to administer general anesthesia, though after enough whining, he might have been willing to try to knock me out with a crate of old-fashioned toothbrushes.

I brought him my night guard, the unsightly rubber item that covers my upper teeth when I sleep so my upper and lower teeth don’t get ground into one big pile of jagged rubble. For years, I had a night guard that was hard plastic, which type was later generally abandoned in favor of a material with much more squish to it.

I’ve been using the latter kind for a couple of years, but lately I decided it was causing my two front teeth to go their separate ways. My theory was that biting down on the back parts of this appliance with my molars was causing the front part to bulge forward.

My evidence: Aching front teeth in the morning, at which time of day the gap between my front teeth was at its largest. By nighttime, the gap would have closed up again to some extent, but over time, it got big enough that the inside of my upper lip was actually getting caught in it at times.

I stopped using this night guard, and after four or five days, my teeth were in close companionship once again, the way I like them.

My dentist said he had never heard of such a thing, but didn’t argue. I said, “Does that mean I’ve made dental history? If you write about this, be sure to use my real name.”

As it happens, the cushiony night guard has also become obsolete, replaced by a type which is hard outside but with some give inside. This sounds like the ticket. My dentist did a cast of my teeth pursuant to obtaining one of these.

In other complaints regarding the corporeal self, my back is killing me lately. I think my mattress may be on the fritz. It’s a couple of years old and has lost some of its starch. It seems to me that acquiring a good mattress must be a matter of luck, because there is no way to discern the mattress’s character by lying on it in the showroom, nor is it likely to reveal its true colors during the period when you can return it.

I have to say, during all the years when I slept on a crappy piece of foam through which the floor could easily be felt, my back felt fine. On the other hand, Tom has the same mattress I do (not the exact same one; a sibling) and his back is OK. He recommended sit-ups. He said cyclists use their back muscles more than they do their stomach muscles, and that things can get out of balance.

I misnomered a CD here lately. The Lorraine Hunt Lieberson CD is actually called Neruda Songs. This is a very sad story. In 1997, Lorraine Hunt, the singer, fell in love with Peter Lieberson, the composer. He set five Pablo Neruda love sonnets to music for her, in what is considered to be some of his most accessible work. You still can’t hum along to it, but it’s hauntingly beautiful.

Well into adulthood when they met, they ended up having just nine years together. Peter Lieberson writes, “Sometimes we would cry in each other’s arms out of gratitude that we had finally found one another.” In 2006, at age 52, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson died of breast cancer.

Now Peter Lieberson is ill with lymphoma.

In the notes for the CD, he writes that after her death, he reminded himself over and over that, in Neruda’s words, “this love has not ended … it is like a long river, only changing lands and changing lips.”