Hallelujer!

In the immortal words of Jeff Buckley, and well, Madea, "Hallelujer!"

Went to the ortho on Tuesday. He said that he just needs one small space to close up, and next month, he will create the mold for my retainer. This, my dears, means that the braces will COME OFF IN 6 WEEKS if all goes according to plan.

I still don't think it's hit me. I have very consciously been willing this process to be over in July. I've told everyone I meet quite definitively that it will end in July. Now that July seems to be coming to fruition, I am pleased, delighted, confused, and curious. I like feeling all of these things.

I came across this passage in Eat Pray Love, this passage helped me through a painful breakup three years ago, and now, somehow, it's so appropriate now too:

Instructions for Freedom:


Life's metaphors are God's instructions


The day is ending. It is time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now let go.


With all your heart, ask for grace, and let go. 


With all your heart, forgive him, forgive yourself, and let him go.


Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering. Then let go. 


When the past has passed from you at last, let go. Then climb down and begin the rest of your life with great joy. 


I feel like a senior in high school, with graduation day just weeks away.  I'm so ready for a known experience to end, and something new to begin. I want to accept my diploma for all that has been learned in the last three years. I want to forgive my orthodontist, and forgive myself for this experience. I want us to smile proudly, unencumbered, at one another, and mean it.

I was walking home from my friend Diana's house tonight, and I saw so many fireflies--the first of the season. They always cause me such delight. I looked up the symbolism of fireflies and it say that they are symbols of hope and inspiration. "They are the promise of accomplishment through hope and efforts. They remind us that we have laid the appropriate groundwork and from it will spring great reward...For those to whom the firefly appears, it is time to trust in your own rhythms, physical and spiritual...Fireflies remind us that there are others who will respond to us and who are like us. They will make their presence known soon.


Yes indeed. Let there be light.

There's No Such Thing As A Mistake, Part 2

I came home after my appointment with the ortho on Tuesday to find that the elastic bands around my teeth had already come loose in two places. I was so angry about this that I almost punched a wall. How many times do I have to keep going back to that office to make sure that I'm getting the proper treatment that I should be receiving?  I went late in the day, knowing that he would not be in the office.

I was greeted by one of the dental assistants, who I like very much. She's always been kind and we've chatted from time to time. She took one look and said to me, "Honestly, does he think that patients are stupid?  Or that they don't notice?  I have patients coming in two and three times a month to fix wires and brackets and tubes. If he just took care of them properly the first time, those visits would be unnecessary. And if someone complains, he calls them crazy."  Or dead wood as the case may be.

Maybe I should have been surprised to hear her say this, but I wasn't. I think I know that my orthodontist has both empathy and behavior issues, and I figured that I wasn't the only one to be on the receiving end of this treatment. She spent a full 45 minutes fixing and redoing the metal tubes that he had installed so that they'd be secure. I asked her point blank, "Really, really, how much time do you think I have left?"

She said that honestly, it was 2-3 months tops. This is in keeping with what he said on Tuesday, and quite frankly, all that I will tolerate. Two to three months will put us at three years exactly, and it is NOT going beyond that. I've decided, most emphatically, that this is over in July. The retainers will begin then, but all of the colossal--and painful--moving and shifting will end.

That said, I've started to experiment with being excited. I've been toyed with so much this year, that it has been hard to let myself be vulnerable enough to believe that this will actually end. But hearing it from her, a voice I can trust, in corroboration not only with him, but what I believe in my own heart has allowed me to begin to taste anticipation on the very tip of my tongue. Quite simply, I like how it feels, and how that feeling is growing in me each day.  I am ready to end this fraught, disillusioned relationship with my ortho, and move on to something much more peaceful, clear, healthy and joyful.

And cast a spotlight on the unquestioningly bright smile that accompanies all of that.

There's No Such Thing As a Mistake

The movie "Unfaithful" was on last weekend. I was really struck by the reasoning by Paul Martel when he says (in his fabulous French accent) "There is no such thing as a mistake. There is what you do, and what you don't do."

The last time I went to the ortho, he was again pleased, and told me that we were really nearing the end. He put metal four new metal hooks inside my mouth and showed me how to essentially wire my jaw shut, which I was to do every night. This was painful, and a bit scary, but just as I started to get used to it,  one of the hooks--and a bracket--popped off about a week later. I had a big press event, so I was unable to go to the ortho that week, and he went on vacation the next week. Not wanting to put myself in the hands of assistants and replacements, I waited to see him. The teeth were floating out there for almost 2 weeks and I felt them move every day. There was something strangely liberating about this--that my teeth, one by one, were rebelling against this process and taking themselves off.

I liked the idea of this.  A lot.

Until today.

I saw the ortho and there was a new assistant at the office. He replaced the wire and she replaced the bracket, only to have it break off while she clumsily put new bands on top of it. He tried to again replace the bracket and had to admonish her that she was assisting him incorrectly. After being in the chair over 20 minutes, I started to feel my lips shaking. Once they had the bracket attached, he was about to have her finish, but this idea completely filled me with dread. I turned to him and said, "Can you finish me?  I really need to get to work." For whatever reason, this started to make me shake even more, though he obligingly finished the job. I was shaking so much by the time I got to the receptionist that she asked me if I wanted to sit down for a bit. More than anything, I just wanted out of the office.

The teeth now feel out of whack where they fit together so nicely two weeks ago. And I have to wire them shut again on top of this. I am back to feeling weepy and angry and so definitively that this whole process was one big colossal mistake.

But I am reminded by Paul Martel that there is no such thing as a mistake. There is only what I did and didn't do.

Why, Yes

Theine by Mary Kinzie

If compelled
to give it up
I would lift
as leaves do
loosened
from the tree
and feel the floating
thread of my thought
blown out
beyond itself
line loose
on the water
wandering
cinder
sleepier
than air

How I Feel About Time...

A Rune, Interminable by Marie Ponsot

Low above the moss
a sprig of scarlet berries
soon eaten or blackened
tells time.

Go to a wedding
as to a funeral:
bury the loss.

Go to a funeral
as to a wedding:
marry the loss.

Go to a coming
as to a going:
unhurrying.

Time is winter-green.
Seeds keep time.
Time, so kept, carries us
across to no-time where

no time is lost.

Angels in America

I had spent a long and lovely weekend celebrating Passover with my family, and on the way home from my brother's house, I stopped off at my mom's to visit with her for a while. My mom lives in a building with over 25 floors, with 10 apartments on each floor. This is the same building I grew up in , and as you can imagine we have a LOT of neighbors. One neighbor greeted us warmly in the elevator, a man I had not seen in years, but for whom I've always had affection. He's been kind to me since I was a small girl, and I was always beguiled by the fabled stories of his past--how he competed in the 1960 summer Olympics, held in Rome (he was a boxer) and though he never married, his popularity with the ladies.

When we saw him in the elevator, I was struck at how he is still so handsome and when he smiled, I almost fell over to notice that he had braces on his teeth. When I pointed at them, and exclaimed, "Look! Me too!" He said, "I'm 76 years old. Can you believe it?"

First and foremost I couldn't believe that he was 76! (He didn't look a day over 50.) But there was something about the braces on his teeth that made him even more appealing. Younger. Sweeter.

I'm firmly convinced that seeing him was no accident, arranged by angels on this most holy weekend. And maybe, just maybe, could it be? That I am also more appealing, younger, and sweeter with braces?

Hmmm.

Runnin' Up That Hill

It has been a long week.

Things have seemed so off kilter with our 29 degree weather on Monday and our soon-to-be 70 degree weather. I find that I am angry at things that normally roll off my back. I'm waking up anxious, my mind racing a million miles an hour. The only solution, it seemed this morning, was to go for a run. I haven't done that in a long time--not since I hurt my knee. Despite the rain, it felt necessary. It's been my best antidote to an overabundance of any emotion, and the easiest way to disperse it. I think better when I run.

The only people in the park were diehard runners and early morning dog walkers. I liked being among this "elite" group--the ones with true purpose, undeterred by cold and rain. I took a different route and chose to run up the hills as opposed to down them.

I've been thinking a lot about choices. Choices of all kinds. The choice to stay or go. The choice to get braces. The choice to change perspective. The choice to challenge myself or sit on the couch. Paper or plastic.

I love the line from Sunday in the Park with George, where Dot sings, "The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not."

I remind myself that where I am is product of many large, life changing choices. Some I question every day. Some I've made my peace with. There is comfort in knowing that the choosing is never a mistake. The choosing is what makes us alive. The choosing is the gas in the car, the rocket fuel, the nourishment for the body to run and jump and play.

What are you choosing to do today?