If I could talk, I’d tell him I live nearby and that “excited” isn’t quite the feeling I get as he prepares my mouth for braces. Braces I should have gotten as a child. Braces I had put off getting as an adult.
I’m a grown woman who, a few days ago, wore braces for the first time in her life — and it feels good. Well, not entirely good. My mouth hurts and the pronunciation of some words is slightly off. I still can’t say “thuper-cala-frahg-ilistic” without sounding like “thuper-cala-frahg-ilistic”. (I was told my mouth will adjust soon.)
It feels good because it took me a long time to get here.
For as long as I can remember, my top front tooth has rested at an angle that made it look chipped. The result: a wry smile that I never felt the need to hide with a raised hand or stifled laugh, but also never fully able to ignore. If I take pictures of me at certain angles, that tooth stands out, demanding to be seen. Here it is in a photo of me after I got married in Nicaragua. There he is in the photo holding my newborn son in a hospital in Virginia.
Over the years, I’ve gone long stretches without thinking about that rebel tooth. Then someone, usually out of well-intentioned concern, reminds me by asking.
Did I fall and hurt my tooth? is usually the first question they ask.
Have I ever considered getting braces? is usually the next question.
I’m a journalist who asks people to share personal information about themselves all the time, so these kinds of questions don’t make me uncomfortable. I believe that the more we talk about our insecurities and differences, the less insecure and different people will feel in our society. Even so, my response to this second question was usually to brush it off with a joke. The actual answer seemed too complicated to share.
We live in an age where it’s easy to feel like you’re surrounded by perfect smiles, so much so that the Washington Post ran an article titled, “Have you noticed that everyone’s teeth are a little too perfect?” So why didn’t I fix my imperfect smile sooner? The truth: I grew up in a family that didn’t have a lot of money to spend on wants, and it took me a long time to get to a place where I felt comfortable putting my needs first.
I’m not sure how old I was when a dentist suggested I get braces. Based on my childhood photos of me losing my top two front teeth until I got the permanent ones, I was probably around 10.
I still remember the conversation with my mom after that dentist visit. It was short. I said I didn’t want braces, and he said ok.
Looking back, I don’t blame her. She and my father worked hard to make sure my siblings and I had what we needed growing up. We didn’t want food, clothes or school supplies. But we lived in a working-class neighborhood on the south side of San Antonio, and our family, like many of the families around us, didn’t chatter away without careful calculation. My mom was constantly looking for sales to stretch the dollars. At the beginning of every school year, she would take us shopping at a store where damaged and defective clothes would be kept until they ended up in the shopping carts of people who didn’t mind that a brand name was slightly misspelled or that a logo was backwards. Many funny moments happened in that store. It’s hard not to laugh when you try on a sweater that has one sleeve noticeably longer than the other.
So it makes sense that when I told my mom she didn’t need to spend thousands of dollars on something that wasn’t medically necessary, she didn’t try to convince me otherwise. Once we decided I wasn’t getting braces, that was it. We never discussed it again. Not when I was a teenager. Not when I was a student.
Then I became an adult and my dental care became my responsibility. Every time I visited a new dentist, the question about braces came up. Some would suggest it in subtle ways. Others would come to me with prices and plans.
I was in my 20s when I decided I wanted to fix my teeth, but I couldn’t afford it, even safely. I was an intern working at a newspaper, renting a basement apartment and paying off my student loans.
Then, before I knew it, over a decade had passed and I was suddenly a mom of two boys. They, along with my husband and my work, became my priorities. When my sons were babies and toddlers, self-care meant getting a haircut every six months and maybe snuggling up for naps. I wasn’t thinking about braces.
Now, my sons are 9 and 11, about the same age I was when this crooked tooth came into my life. A few months ago, I decided it was time to give this 10-year-old girl a long overdue gift.
In December, I met with an orthodontist and had the procedure to get Invisalign, which are clear aligners. I then made an appointment to get my teeth ready to start using them.
It was not lost on me that the earliest available appointment fell two days before Valentine’s Day. That timing felt right.
