One.
The first thing I noticed, nearly, when I started cleaning out my dad’s house was the huge number of toothpicks lying about. On the breakfast table. On the metal tray where he kept the toaster. On the lamp table beside his TV chair. By the sink. Next to his computer. On the nightstand. On the lavatory. On the kitchen counter. In the junk drawer in the kitchen. On top of the clothes dryer. Next to his briefcase.

I don’t think he’d thrown away a toothpick in years.

Where he lives now, in an assisted living center, I don’t think he has toothpicks in his room.

I wonder if he misses them.

Two.
My dad wore braces on his teeth when he was a kid. He’s 90 now, so he was a kid a very long time ago. And it wasn’t like he lived in a city, where even in those early days of orthodontia, braces would have been easy to obtain: he lived in a small town in the Texas panhandle.

His teeth are crooked again now, having found their way back, over the decades, to the places in his jaw where they started out.

Three.
My mom was always self-conscious about her teeth, which were very crooked. She finally got braces, as an adult, and seemed to smile a lot more once her teeth looked better.

Four.
I wore braces twice. Once for six years, spanning all of junior high and a good part of high school.

Then, I got them again about 15 years ago, and wore them for a little more than a year.

I was a much more compliant patient when I was paying for the braces myself.

Five.
I dream about teeth. Broken teeth, mostly. Broken teeth like shards of glass in my mouth. Broken teeth that I keep spitting out, over and over; there’s never an end to these tooth-shards. I often have vivid dreams, but this is the only one that recurs. What in the world? Well, the Dream Encyclopedia* has this to say regarding the symbology of dreams about teeth:

Loosing the teeth may reflect a loss of power as well as a grasp of life circumstances.

I suppose I concur with that assessment. The past year and a little more has been a time of great upheaval, a time when I often felt as though my grasp of things was slipping. But I try to remember that no matter how much upheaval I’ve felt and had to deal with, it is a tiny drop compared to what my dad has gone through. In a short period, he went from owning a home full of his life’s possessions and living on his own and on his own terms, to holding a couple of checks after the house and its contents sold. Everything he owns now is compressed down to what fits into that efficiency apartment, and he has to ask me to run his errands.

He’s never asked for toothpicks.

Lubbock, Texas
photographed 8.23.2013

*The Dream Encyclopedia, James R. Lewis