Soft Foods

Posted on February 25, 2003 in Dentition

I’m on soft foods for another two weeks. This also excludes nuts, lettuce, rice, and other stuff with invisible feet that take them into the hole between the molars on my lower right side. Last night, we went to a Mexican restaurant. I stared longingly at the bowl of tortilla chips the waiter brought, knowing that I couldn’t crunch them down as was my custom. I waited for my enchiladas and my tamale to show as Lynn lustily served herself and dipped them in ample helpings of red salsa.

I don’t mind the diet except for these moments. This isn’t the first time I’ve been on it. When I manage myself or when Lynn assists, I am good about observing the laws that the dentist sets down for me. It’s when my mother gets involved that I find such diets onerous. She rewrites them according to my desires and then reverses them.

If my concern is to sneak a small bite of a nut or other dainty crunchy, she will deny them to me, all the while eating them herself in front of me. If I try to observe the dentist’s regimen, she will serve me bland rice and salads in amounts that create nests large enough for a hummingbird to roost in the hole. No matter my protest, she will deny the validity of my claim: I am a nurse. I know what I am doing. (Crazy Tracy, take note!)

I then return to the dentist defeated and caught between two authorities. Funny: it’s a recurring crippling theme of my life. I have trouble choosing which power to obey.

If this were a Victor Hugo story or a fairy tale, I’d go to the higher authority and things would get resolved by the higher authority removing the power of the lesser one. But more often, in life, the lower of the two authorities (my mother in this case) whines that she cannot be dispensed with and the abuse continues.