Dental trauma

Last month I made a dentist appointment for Peter with the dentist who’s been treating him in Kendal where we used to live in the Lake District.  It’s a four-hour drive to get there from our home here in Cambridge, but Peter is – what word can I use that may reflect a little more sensitivity on my part than ”phobic”? – perhaps I can say “hesitant to change dentists” after he’d finally submitted to treatment after a self-imposed exile of thirty years.  (I think it is only fair to say in this context that his stories of dental terrorism practiced in the north of England during his childhood may have produced a similar avoidance behavior in almost anyone not suffering from a bad case of masochism.)

Anyway, we made hotel reservations and added an extra day to the trip to have dinner with some friends, with whom we had a lovely visit.  The next day we arrived at the dental surgery an hour early so we walked along the river before going in to announce our presence to the receptionist.  She was a brittle young woman who greeted Peter with a steely ”your appointment was thirty minutes ago.  The dentist cannot see you today.”  I screamed as dramatically as I manage dramatic screaming, which is poorly.  This trip had cost us several hundred pounds and two days’ drive, and I had apparently got the time wrong. 

To make a ghastly story short, Peter dragged me from the office saying we had no choice but to go home.  I phoned the receptionist several times that afternoon to see if anyone had cancelled, but she was unyielding and unsympathetic.  Peter clamped his jaw closed so I knew he was seriously upset, but after saying once that I’d first told him the appointment was at 2:30, didn’t produce a tide of recrimination at my stupid carelessness.  I might have felt vaguely better if he had.  Instead, I lay awake rigid most of the night in the pub where we had booked a room, trying to relive the event with a different ending.

I’ve just booked another appointment with the same dentist for next Thursday.  I will phone on Monday to confirm that it is, as I have recorded on my calendar, for 9:30 a.m.  It no longer seems quite so important to convince myself that it was the receptionist who wrote the time of the initial appointment on the wrong line of the dentist’s appointment list, and not I who scribbled “2:30″ into my calendar and later misread it as “3:20.”  It is a mercy that some of our mistakes become less important with time. 

Could time go backward and go forward differently?

We can retrace our steps in all three directions in space, and physicists say there is no theoretical reason why time can’t run backward.  It’s the idea behind what they call worm holes in which we could go back into the past and possibly come out in a different place than we are now.  Live a different life, as it were, than the one we lived the first time when we started out from at that point before.  Nobody has the faintest idea yet of how we could do this in practical terms, of course, but as a metaphysical possibility, it is tantalizing.

Why do we start out our lives in a state of such complete ignorance?  It is only when we get old that we might have acquired a modicum of wisdom required to live life worthy of the gift it is.  Is it possible that we are actually living time backwards now?

It would be a nice idea to think we could begin life with wisdom instead of ending it that way.  The Buddhists say we are incomplete (which is an idea I much prefer to explaining our failings as “sin”) and that we have to keep coming back and living life in different reincarnations until we are finally complete.  There are people who believe they can actually remember living other lives before this one, though  I can’t intuit it myself.  But I don’t believe we return to a state of non-existence when we die either. 

Fingers for thought

I’ve just read that women whose ring finger is longer than the index finger are more apt to have better than average abilities in skills that are traditionally associated with males.  They are called “mathematical and spatial abilities” in the esoteric world of tests and measurements, but in the real world, it’s things like reading maps, finding the way without asking for help, repairing leaky taps and cars or anything else mechanical that won’t start.  Apparently both the hand and the brain are influenced by the levels of testosterone in the mother during pregnancy.   

It didn’t surprise me to discover this further evidence of my male-oriented brain as much as learning that the ring finger isn’t longer on almost everybody’s hands.  I’m now carrying out my own unscientific study to see if most women I know fit into the predicted category. 

Rules of miscommunication

I grew up in a large family in which, until my mother died leaving ten children between 6 and 20 years old, dinner discussions were often robust.  Especially on Saturdays, when Father Basil came to dinner and he and Dad carried on learned debates about the state of the world.  Father Basil was an old school friend of Dad’s, who became a Catholic priest and a history professor at the university.  I learned how to think from these Saturday night dinners.  Above all, I think I learned to take the arguments of the opposition seriously by trying to argue their side against my own.  It’s a practice I’ve tried to continue.

But families change, and we have discovered that the rules of argument and communication are not the same for every family in the next generation.  Our respect – even liking – for each other came perilously close to breaking down completely when we tried to discuss abortion in a heated email exchange.  We now have a tacit agreement to avoid any subject on which the Catholic Church takes a stand.  Humour must also be used with care, as we do not agree about what is legitimate.  Living here in England,  my use of humour has become potentially explosive.  Which I’m sorry about, because much of English humour in my opinion is often the funniest and cleverest in the world.

Several weeks ago I sent an email to our family listserve asking if their opinions about Iraq had changed as mine have over the last few years.  Criticizing President Bush, up to this point, has been off-limits because of his support for anti-abortion and anti-gay legislation, so I wasn’t sure if Iraq could get through the barrier.  So far the discussion has been going forward without seeming to threaten the fault lines of our family structure. 

It’s amazing how difficult it is to respect someone with whom you fundamentally disagree.  I suspect each of us is working on suppressing epithets like “stupid,” “going to hell,” “bigoted,” and “arrogant.”  My own feeling is that if a family like ours can’t learn to communicate with each about important issues, we have little to suggest to the Israelis and Palestinians, the Shias and Sunnis, the Christians and Muslims, even the Catholics and Protestants.   In fact, Northern Ireland, after 35 years, just might be able to teach us something.

Acting my age

I walked to the post office to renew my car registration this morning.  I waited in the queue behind a man with a series of complicated packages to mail, and confidently stepped up to the window knowing that my procedures would be simple and quick.  They would have been if I’d brought the insurance document for this year rather than last.  I trudged home, and mumbling to myself about having to use my feet if I wasn’t going to use my head, returned to the post office with my up-to-date insurance.  I knew immediately from the expression of kind pity on the clerk’s face that this time I’d brought an out-of-date inspection certificate.

 Either I am getting old or I’ve always been like this.  I think I might actually prefer the latter explanation.  I’ve survived well enough if it is, but if it’s getting old, life might get a lot trickier in the future than I’m used to.

Looking one’s age

How does “you don’t look that old” subtly morph from meaning “you’re not old enough” into a compliment?  When I was in my 20’s,  people often told me I didn’t look as old as I really was.  It was an observation that invariably came with the implied or explicit assumption that I wasn’t old enough to do whatever I was proposing.  I was thirty-three the last time I was asked to produce some identification before being served a drink in a bar.  In retrospect, I think I did not look my age because after nine years in the convent, I had maintained an innocent inexperience and naivete that showed.

Now some forty years later it’s happening again, but this time, “you don’t look that old” is invariably meant as a compliment.  I’ve never thought that not looking old was as important as being attractive, and I’ve seen enough stunning women in their 70’s and 80’s to know that old can be amazingly attractive even in the sheer photographic sense.

So I’m rather surprised to discover that I have adopted the value of looking young and feel flattered when someone says ” you don’t look that old.”  Some day I will look unambiguously as old as I am, though, so I’m making an effort to hold on to my original assessment that young doesn’t necessarily mean beautiful, and “old” doesn’t have to be a pejorative accusation amounting to ugly.

A perverse ingratitude

On my desk, I have Victor Weisskopf’s quote “When life is very bad, two things make life worth living – Mozart and quantum mechanics.”  Quantum mechanics is more exciting in theory than in practice so I listened to Mozart’s 38th for enlightenment in my determination to live this last stage in my life for itself.

I’m 67 years old and I feel like a spoiled child who’s been indulging in a tantrum about having to go to bed.  I have this fantastic result from cataract surgery that makes me feel 20 years younger and gives me vision I’ve never had in my life.  Am I grateful?  Oh no.  I not only want to feel 20 years younger;  I want to be 20 years younger.  No.  No.  I won’t have it.  I am not going to spend the rest of my life engaged in this kind of stupid, unrealistic sense of loss.

That child careening down the supermarket aisle yesterday is right.  What life isn’t for is trying to recapture the past, for regretting what one doesn’t have instead of delighting in what one does.  If I won’t let go of the past, I can’t have the now.  And when it comes to having, I have an awful lot.  I will not live subsumed by some fake existential despair about a past that is over, engaged in some fruitless attempt to regain in.

Besides, I’m remembering that university wasn’t all exciting research, stimulating colleagues and students, eager minds pushing against my own frontiers of thought.  It was, as a colleague reminded me yesterday, exam papers and dissertation boards.  It was bored and angry students as well as enthusiastic, inquiring ones.  There was driving through the snow, and walking the dogs before 7 AM in order get to 8 o’clock classes.  There was the vicious, terrible, vindictive politics, the shoddy work, the promotions of underachievers and undercutting some of the best scholastic faculty.

Perhaps I will write another book.  But first there is London, and the garden, and the loft insulation to finish.  Careening down the supermarket aisle, though, might be more than I can manage.

How to turn good news into a crisis

As a result of my cataract surgery, my vision in each eye is now 20/20 without glasses.  That is better than it has ever been in my life.  I have the world of books, of reading, of driving securely back.  Why am I not rejoicing instead of feeling overwhelmed with a sense of loss, of having nothing any longer to give?

I suppose I needn’t be so dramatic about it – isn’t this a typical reaction of almost everyone who retires from work they have loved?  I don’t belong to the academic world anymore, and I thought I’d stopped mourning the loss when I found so many other things I enjoy doing, especially writing The Big Bang to Now.  But the feeling of loss is sharp again this afternoon.

I’m now asking the existential question – to what good use can I put my renewed vision?  the options, at a retired 67 seem mysteriously small.  In theory, I no longer believe the Catholic doctrine of my childhood that God has a plan in which I am called to play a special part.  I don’t think there is some hidden purpose God is playing hide-and-seek for me to find.  Still, the options seem insignificant.  Perhaps it is that I have not really come to accept what a very small role each of us is – or perhaps I really mean that I am – able to play in the great scheme of things.  But that niggling question of meaning keeps returning.  One part of me is impatient with the other part of me that keeps gnawing away at what I believe we are not meant to know.

I watched the shoppers in the supermarket today.  They were mostly well-dressed, clearly affluent, this being Cambridge, probably well-educated.  The children, not particularly well-behaved, nonetheless delighted me.  One went careening down the aisle and turned around with a grin that could have lit up the night sky.  I watched his sheer exuberance and uncomplicated acceptance of being alive, simply delighting in life with unguilty joy.  No one seemed consumed with the question of meaning that is currently plaguing me like a neurotic obsession.  It is the wrong question.  I am sure it is a degradation of life, and I am determined to find an alternative way to live the rest of my days.

Learning to drive – again

Since my cataract surgery, I’m seeing things I’ve never seen before.  Like the markings on the birds in our garden, or what my make-up actually looks like to normally-sighted persons.  On the other hand, I’m also seeing that a lot of things need cleaning that looked perfectly all right before.

Driving again has been a bit scary.  My confidence that gradually seeped away as my eyesight deteriorated hasn’t come flooding back with my new vision.  It’s worse when Peter is in the car because he’s still quite jumpy, which makes me a nervous wreck.  I’m concentrating on ignoring him and watching the road.  For his part, Peter is trying to appear outwardly calm.  His confidence in my driving hasn’t come flooding back either, so I guess we’re in this together in a step-by-step process of learning to trust my road-worthiness again.

Spin, bragging, and down home failures

I’ve been thinking today about the similarities between spin in Britain and bragging in the U.S.  Both are egocentric presentations of one’s accomplishments, laced with liberal lashings blaming someone else for anything that has gone wrong.  I find both rather distasteful, but it seems to be standard fare for political success and career advancement. 

The alternative to spin here in England is a quiet confidence that makes a fairly realistic judgement of one’s accomplishments and shortcomings, and that doesn’t place much credence in others’ positive or negative evaluations.  It’s Peter’s style, which I have always found attractive.  I have spent years trying to trick him into accepting a compliment but his skill at improvising alternative interpretations for any of his achievements improves as I do, so my lifetime success rate still hovers at around 1%.

This kind of confidant diffidence may becoming increasingly rare even here in Britain, though  I have seen flashes of it here in Cambridge and Oxford.  Unfortunately, the very expensive and very heavy shower door I installed in the bathroom I tiled last month has just fallen off.   It did not break, but I am looking for someone besides myself to blame. 

Wish I could spin better.