Pulling Teeth - A Spiritual Rap With Love
An Exercise in Extractional Analysis
....© by D. Grant DeMan
"Darling be brave." She whispered. My wife, Diane, was that kind of woman. A plaintive touch of sympathy and concern, brows arched in love. Today was the day I faced the dentist, today finally - the finality of that word! I faced the impending loss of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; my four upper incisors. She kissed me as I started the van. "Now, don't drive if you feel faint."
Faint. She thinks I just might pass out? Oh God, please don't let me faint...
The time had arrived when I had to take this step. The pain? No it wasn't a fear of my dentist. Dr. John Herschmiller was a kind and loving surgeon with the voice and hands of an angel and the skill of a genius. He was the best. But he was also a dentist and these were my teeth, my teeth. I was as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
The first of the four was Matthew, who took over where Malachi left off in my early life. He was a proud rebirth, a coming of age, soon to be joined by the others up there to form a rather formidable team. There was quite a gap between him and Mark, a Cro-Magnon gap, a throwback to the ancient hunter to enable him to better whistle birds down from the trees. Or so I was told. That's the legend. Matthew had not been well really since my first jawbreaker in the fifth grade. Patched and worn Mark, Luke and John had also served me well. Luke cracked in 1962 by the knuckle-duster on the index finger of a Newfoundlander who, swinging at someone he despised, gave me a lifetime problem. It wasn't so much the cracked tooth that caused the immediate spectacle in that Montreal honky-tonk, but Mark's decision to relay his torture to my lower lip which exploded in pain, a scarlet blast splattering the pure white Ermine coat of my gorgeous date whom I had impressed suitably just moments before with an introduction to Ronnie Prophet, the greatest entertainer of his time next to Conway Twitty. Everybody screamed. Guns and knives came out. (Those were rather rowdy days) The Newfie exited tout de suite, as did my date, which left Ron to compress my wound with a fat cold towel. Every ten years or so Luke and I commemorated the recollection of that exciting time by revisiting the pain. The gum would swell for about a week.
Now that John was sharing that pain with us the time had come to say goodbye, to put these four back in the spiritual mode. To replace them with lesser beings from the world of high technology, the materialistic realm. But first they had to be ripped out by the roots! Oh Diane. Oh don't let me pass out.... please.
The lounge chair was comfortable. John the dentist, not the tooth, was soothing me."We'll make them numb first." The music took me back in reverie. Assistant, Vickie, remained warmly at my side. This was not, definitely not, my experience of yester-year in a grubby hotel room across from a noisy bar in a board-walk cow and mining town which had been my first six-year-old encounter with a frontier "dentist" with the breath of an a buffalo and a treadle-driven drill, two rusty syringes needles bent lying dagger-like on a dusty sill. I relaxed as Matthew's time drew near.
In the early eighties while attending a showing and sale - a one-woman show - I saw her there, the artist, the "life is relationships" - the beautiful Diane. She took me by the hand and I was totally awed with the sincerity, the homespun integrity of her work. She looked so young and her blue eyes sparkled and she introduced me to her daughter and her newly born grandson, Jesse. In her daughter's eyes I saw her and I remembered then that I had taught her some years back.
A painting reflected her burning lust for being alive, the inner soul endowed by The Creator. She loved The Lord most intensely her works revealed. I was smitten - but she was in a relationship with a colleague; all the evil gods of envy and illicit lust entered my mind. If only...
I wanted to kiss those lips, hold those hands...totally possess this woman. There were no limits to my fantasy that day or in those that followed. And from time to time as we met the feelings would return with a rush. And God was good to us.
Goodbye Matthew...Mark was now up to bat. I rested easy thinking, just thinking as the music played. About the people I' d known and the places they'd gone; the rich and poor, the young students, the felons, the crazies and the drunks, the lovers and the losers, the bright and the dull...I'd been all of these at times and my face and this old body told the tales. I smiled inwardly...
We were sitting at a table in a fast-food cafe one morning with a couple of schizophrenics, a paranoid and a drunk. Diane was next to me looking a little down from the wear and tear of the artist's life, perhaps a little jaded now from misplaced trust. "Life is relationships." A good idea. But you shouldn't cast your pearls before swine. The blue eyes still sparkled, but perhaps a little less bright.
"Wouldn't you like to marry a rich woman, Don?" One of the men asked. "Wouldn't it be fine to be fixed for life and not have to work? That's for me, a rich woman!"
"No I think not. I'd like a lady rich in heart but poor in worldly goods, one to inspire me to work harder and smarter to make her proud." I responded something like that. And then Diane moved close against me; I could feel her warm body through the coat and she gestured as we sat there partly in jest and, I guessed; I hoped partly as desire...
"You got it wrong, Buddy." She faced the man across the table. "Wealthy or poor, a woman has to admire and respect her man; as well as love him. I'm tired of people who expect their mate to pick them up out of the gutter. You've gotta be a person, a good person in yourself first, then you'll deserve the love of a good woman. Right now ask yourself what you have to offer to any woman. A woman both moneyed and stupid enough to love you? Fat chance!"
Right then I felt her passion, and her pain and her life went right through me. It was like our souls met there that morning, like a light turned on, and somehow I knew the light was mutual, a big band concert, a choir, a heavenly choir; I was revisiting my love, like a seventeen-year-old at the senior prom. With the lights low and the saxophones playing down and dirty. Was it possible? For a man in his mid-fifties! The blood rose....
Luke, you troublesome rascal; you are going now down into history, drifting off into that world of memory. Your pain, and yes, your good service is remembered well like the scar on my lip. You taught me that any fool can love those who love him, but that I must learn to love my enemies, those who spread lies, the people who steal from me and my loved ones. Dear Luke, thanks for your lessons. Goodbye Luke.
It was about ten or so when I entered the bar at the Arbutus Hotel that evening. It was a place for people to hoist a few and maybe dance. Many wound up in deep trouble. I ought to know. That had been MY style not too many years ago. So I figured I owed it to someone; to keep them out of trouble, maybe drive them home. A sort of hobby.
Usually after checking with the bartender, I picked the most helpless or obnoxious company in the place. But then I saw her there, tiny and bathed in a pale beauty, beer in hand; but still that animated sparkle...those blue eyes. She looked up at me and I sat down with her and a friend. The conversation just flowed. The smiles, the gestures, it was all there. Minutes passed and we both headed toward the door. She put her bike in the back of my van and we went to the next bar on my evening agenda. One thing, as they say, led to another...we danced all night...we danced all weekend and wound up celebrating our new found happiness in the backseat of the van parked in my driveway. Diane's caress was the essence of dreams. You never, never want to wake, and you fight it and fight it and then, when you finally waken, you try so desperately hard to get back to the place you left off. It was like that. The cloying scent of mimosa filled the air and we floated; Valentine's Day and Christmas, and Graduation, birthday and our very, very first love.
Hardly did I realize that John was leaving my body. Both Vickie and Dr. Herschmiller were focused on their work. So gentle, so calm. How many drillings, how many fillings did we endure together over the years, John? Nevertheless you, like the others, served this unworthy master well through his time. I apologize for neglecting you. Forgive me please, John. Do I hear you whisper as you depart my mortal coil, "God loves you and so do I."
It was June; we drove to the West Coast of Vancouver Island for a few days. On the return voyage we found a deserted campground high above a verdant lake, and stayed there beside the river that fed it. In the morning we hiked up a path and found there a lush, lime-green alpine meadow inviting us to bide some time and we lay down on that carpet and we bided. Once more I looked into those crystal blue eyes, now crinkled in happiness, joy and the poetic search for a rhapsodic life. And the love of our youth flowed. To hold her had once been enough, but now we gave to each other our very essence while the doves played overhead.
Thank you. That each day now I wake next to her touched by her smile and that arched vulnerable brow. And thanks for our total giving and sharing and how we celebrate our wedding "weekiversary" every Thursday, alone together; two celebrant lovers. JOY - Thy name art Diane. So corny...so true.
The final door was closed on The Four Books - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Vickie hovered over me like a thoroughbred mother hen, attentive to my rambles, my digressions and comfort. My new teeth were installed. I glanced in the mirror. " Doctor, you have made me into a movie star!"
I was doubly happy to see Diane rush out to meet me in the carport. "I was so worried, Dear. How do you feel, Hunzer?" I love her pet name for me.
"I'm fine. So fine." I grinned.
"I'll just have to take time to get used to your brand new smile, you big old rascal. Its like I have a new man. But I'm hoping he isn't too different than the old one. I kinda liked him too." Then she kissed me carefully. "Was it very, very bad?"
"No, not at all." I said softly, taking her little hand. "It was sort of like an intimate thing, a visit with The Lord and with you. A rapture. Oh, how can I explain?"
"I just meditated onus." I continued. "In fact should I ever slip a little in our relationship, I might just go have a couple of extractions to remind me of what we mean to each other, maybe Moses or Jeremiah, or perhaps Paul...there are not too many choices left, are there?"
We laughed all the way into the house and up the stairs.
Tomorrow was Thursday!
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