Last Thursday evening, my wife and I celebrated my 50th birthday at Firefly Bistro & Bar in downtown Manchester. We sat at the bar where my wife had a martini, and I sipped a Guinness then ordered our meals. The food was great, and the service—as has always been our experience at Firefly—was exceptional.
After a half of a century spinning around this dizzy and dazzling globe, I couldn’t have asked for anything more from my birthday than the company of my wife on a beautiful summer evening in July.
There is only one small glitch: My 50th birthday was in March.
I wrote about an accident that I had in February in this column when it happened. In short, I was moving a futon into my basement, skipped a step on the stairs and face-planted, breaking my nose and fracturing my two front teeth. As it turned out, my front teeth needed to be extracted and replaced with dental implants and new crowns.
For anyone unfamiliar with the process of getting a dental implant, it is a masterclass in patience. Without going into the particulars—which anyone can read on their own—it requires having the tooth (or teeth, in my case) surgically extracted, implants placed in the jawbone, and then four to six months of waiting for the bone tissue to heal around the implants.
I know, gross.
Now, in my particular case, these were my top front teeth, which is not exactly indiscrete. I’m also a teacher, so it wasn’t as if my students wouldn’t notice that my front teeth were missing.
Thus began the arduous journey that overlapped with my 50th birthday where I had to wear a cosmetic retainer with two false teeth in the front. It was six months that taught me lessons in humility, patience and human kindness.
Amazingly, no one ever knew that I was wearing the retainer—or no one said anything. However, this also meant that I would have to take the retainer out to eat, so I couldn’t—unless I was willing to show the general public a ghoulish grin—go out to eat in restaurants.
Now, let me be real clear here: This experience decimated my ego. I’m vain. I can admit that I’m vain, and not having front teeth made me feel…
I’m almost ashamed to say it because there are so many people in this world who cannot afford the dental care that my privilege afforded me. And now I’ve become hypersensitive to this. When I see people without teeth, or damaged teeth—who I assume desperately want them fixed—-I no longer make assumptions. I get it.
Every morning, for the past six months, I’d look in the mirror and see myself without front teeth. Some days it was, quite frankly, horrific. Other days, I would look deeper and try to figure out who was looking back at me.
That had absolutely nothing to do with teeth. That had to do with learning some humility, and it took me half of a century to do it.
Every morning, for six months, while driving to work with that damned retainer in my mouth, I would quietly count down the days until the whole process would be over.
But nothing was ever guaranteed. There was no definitive date that I could circle on the calendar, like the end of a prison sentence, and say, “This is when it ends.” I had to learn Zen-like patience. I started doing more yoga and tried to make this—as we teachers are oh-so fond of doing—a teachable moment for myself.
The other takeaway from this experience was how truly kind other people can be, even when they’re not obligated to be kind to you. We see a lot of cruelty projected in the world, particularly the media, but I learned that there is just as much kindness.
From the start, my dentist, Dr. Singh at Manchester Family and Cosmetic Dentistry, was specific, professional, conclusive and kind. The day I showed up with my mangled nose and broken teeth, she assured me that I would get through all of it.
I did.
And the receptionist at Dr. Singh’s office, a young woman named Tayla, went out of her way to help me with the appointments, communications, as well as the billing with the insurance companies. She was always kind and personable over text messages or phone calls. She didn’t have to be kind to me. She didn’t get paid any extra for it. But she was.
As were the folks in the office at New Hampshire Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in Manchester, where I had the actual surgery done. Dr. Bean, who performed the surgery, was a consummate professional with an intuitive bedside manner, and the nurses were extremely helpful and caring. If you have to get your teeth yanked from your head, these are the people who can make it tolerable.
All of these people were kind to me when I did nothing to deserve their kindness, other than falling down the stairs.
Almost exactly four months from my chronological birthday, with new crowns that actually look better than my old teeth, I finally celebrated my birthday dinner with my wife. It was the best dinner of my life—so far.