Dreams of Teeth
Jack is upset. “My mouth hurts Mommy! And there’s a bump!”
“Can you show me where baby?”
He takes my finger and places it on a wet, tender-firm lump all the way in the back of his mouth. Immediately, I am transported back to memories of teething babies. Those little swellings would form, followed soon after by sharp, ridgy dots of white, visible on smooth pink gums. Aaron and I would run our fingers over the ridges, fascinated by the tiny tooth emerging.
“It’s a tooth!” I told Jack excitedly.
I did not expect him to burst into tears.
Nervously, I begin to ramble, trying to make it better. “No Sweetie. This is so exciting! “You’re getting a molar! Those are the big teeth all of the way in the back of your mouth! Your molars are your grownup teeth! So, you know what this means?!!!”
He shakes his head slowly, sniffling, his face wet with tears, nose running.
“Your other grown-up teeth are coming! All of your baby teeth are going to get loose and fall out and your grown-up teeth will come in! The bump on your gums means that this will probably happen really soon! You get to put the teeth under your pillow!” I struggle to keep my upbeat tone though I am distracted by how bizarre my “reassurance” sounds.
Jacks eyes grow wide. His face is pale.”Will it hurt?” he asks.
“Maybe a tiny bit. ”
My voice takes on this high-pitched, falsely chipper tone. I sound insane to myself.
“Mostly it’s kind of fun. I remember wiggling my teeth back and forth all day long. And it would hurt a teeny bit, but for some reason I kind of liked it and I just couldn’t resist pushing it with my tongue more and more and more, until it would just pop out! And then you get to put your tooth under your pillow and the tooth fairy comes and takes it away! And she just might leave you some money!”
Jack starts shaking and crying so violently that he can hardly breathe.
“I like the teeth I have!” he moans, “I want to keep them!”
I’d never thought terribly hard about this process before, but with each excited word I uttered,as I desperately tried to drum up Jack’s enthusiasm (Who doesn’t want to lose a tooth?!!!) it became clearer and clearer how terrifying bizarre it actually is–
sharp edges of bone
bursting through tender gums.
the slight taste of blood in your mouth.
the exhilarating sting
as you tease a piece of your body,
once rooted reliably
to simply detach.
My shoulders tense as my mind fills suddenly with images of the tooth dreams that have plagued me for years. A quick google search reveals that dreams of teeth are common and completely unoriginal anxiety dreams. Common they may be, but mine are painfully vivid and leave me wide awake, filled panic and horror and deep shame.
What I always think of as my first tooth dream,though technically more of a “gum dream”, is seared permanently on my mind.
I remember sitting up breathlessly in our house on Van Vorst St, in the room I shared with my sister. I frantically examined every corner of my mouth with my tongue to reassure myself that the dream was not real. I remember focussing my eyes on the familiar sight of Molly asleep in her bed surrounded by stuffed animals, to calm myself.
But most of all, I remember the details of the dream.
I can see it still.
It is a sunny, summer day. I am walking slowly down the path in front of our house when all of a sudden my mouth feels full.
there is this terrifying pulpy presence in my mouth.
this odd sense of emerging bulk.
heavy, wet, alarming.
I push the damp mass from my mouth with my tongue and I watch it fall heavily to the sidewalk.
Lying there is a large, pink chunk of my gums, mesmerizingly moist and spongy. It glistens in the sun, like a dropped chunk of watermelon.
I take another step and again my mouth is full. Again I spit out a wet hunk of flesh. It happens with each step and I remember reaching the end of the pathway, where our front walk met up with the sidewalk, and looking back at the ghastly wet trail leading up to the front porch and feeling overtaken by terror.
Over the years I have had similar dreams regularly. In them I am invariably in a place where I am supposed to seem normal and responsible– work, a family function– when I notice, to my horror, that one of my teeth is loose. The discovery is always marked by horror and shame that mounts as I find myself unable to leave the tooth alone. I can’t stop fiddling with it with my tongue, both repulsed and fascinated by the way it gradually becomes looser and looser until suddenly,
it just breaks free.
It’s no longer a part of me,
but a hard wet presence in my mouth.
A terrible object with smooth sides
and sharp edges
that slice my tongue.
There is always an awkwardness in the dream as I try to figure out what to do with the tooth and how to hide the mortifying gap in my mouth.
Embarrassment.
Humiliation.
The alien feeling of the toothless gap,
deep and empty and vulnerable,
a part of you never before exposed to air,
and the compulsion to jam your tongue in there
to protect it’s sensitive newness.
What if these dreams, so common in our culture, are really a memory of trauma?
A memory of the anxiety that Jack is experiencing right now.
Right now, as he attempts to wrap his mind around the idea that parts of his body can just fall off or that new parts can force their way in.
Somehow we push it down.
We make it normal.
We tell ourselves that a fairy and a shiny new quarter will make it all okay.
But still.
The memory lingers.
Zeke and Destroy 