SAGE ADVICE: Tooth Truth

It’s too early for his roots to be dissolving, but that’s what’s happening, at least according to the books we’ve been reading. They say the baby teeth fall out, minus their dissolved roots, of course, when their bigger replacements push through. In a matter of weeks or months or whatever, I’m not sure because I kept getting hung up on that whole dissolved roots thing, a full-size, genuine adult tooth, the last one he’ll ever get in that particular spot, will be grinning back at me whenever I look his way.
I’ll grin back. Eventually I’ll even grin back without a wisp of sorrow in my eyes.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for him and proud, oddly, of him as he wiggles that collapsing baby tooth for whatever stationary grownup he happens across. That loose tooth is a big deal for him. Me too. I’ve had my share of loose teeth - more than my share if you can count loosening done by a car’s side mirror – but this is different.
This is a tooth I’ve been acquainted with for nearly six years. It’s the same one I watched groaning up in its tectonic way during that period his head got all flaky and his hair, straight and dark, fell out and grew back blond and curly.
The tip of my pointer finger, wrapped in the incessant worry that it might not be clean enough, felt in wonder, awe even, at the little ridged bump breaking through his inflamed gum line. That was before, back when a new tooth coming in, straight and strong we were sure, somehow reflected on us, made us the parents we thought we would be before late night feedings and later night diaper changes zombified us for days on end. It didn’t matter that the reality of a maybe not-clean-enough pointer finger told a different story.
It all happened before we realized that the future was something that would come all too soon, even sooner if we didn’t take a moment, just a little one, to mourn that bump of a tooth even as we celebrate it.
That bump of a tooth, the one that any day now will be tucked under my eldest son’s pillow, was his first step. That first step eventually carried him down the driveway and loaded him onto the school bus. It now walks him every morning to his first grade class. Eventually it will carry him across the stage to grab a diploma, and if all goes as planned, diplomas. Then it will, just as my first step did, help him carry a load of belongings – many of them mine – as he moves out of the house. That tooth, the one I used to rub in awe before it was big enough to even be seen by the eye, is something he has outgrown. He doesn’t need it any longer, what with its roots all dissolved and a bigger, better, more permanent one right behind it. That permanent one is his and his alone. It will be with him – as long as his cousin doesn’t shove his head into a car’s side mirror after church one day – when he’s grown and old and I’m a memory, hopefully a good one. That big tooth waiting to come in, is him, in a way. That little tooth was good, but he can’t rely on it to chew his food forever. So things in his mouth are changing.
Had it happened up later, after I knew about such things, I would have spotted that tooth immediately for what it was. My double. My brother.