Even Little Girls Named Ruthie ...


Alex got his braces off today!



I have this huge emotional crazy thing with the braces, as exhaustively documented here and in the old blog. They were our first foray into some semblance of middle-class behavior; hanging out in the orthodontist's office, I felt like a Real, Respectable Grownup for the first time.

Simultaneously, though, I felt conflicted about forcing an uncomfortable medical procedure on the kid in the interest of mere appearances. If he'd had a serious bite problem which prevented him from chewing his food properly, or was going to lead to massive tooth decay if left unchecked, that'd be one thing, but this was just standard my-family-of-origin funky eyeteeth. As it turned out, the process took more than four years, involved extraction of two beautiful strong healthy adult teeth, and caused him enough pain to regularly skip school the day after his adjustments.

And too, I was scared that we wouldn't be able to get them off before we had to leave. I imagined never being able to afford to hook up with a new orthodontist, and the poor kid going into his thirties with the same rusty set of braces he picked up at the beginning of the millennium.

So today was quite the landmark: respectability carried through to its logical conclusion, a situation resolved with which I was never quite comfortable mentally, and his teeth are gorgeous! Well, sort of dingy-looking, but definitely an improvement over the chock-full-o-lunch-scraps look he's had for the last four years.

The coolest part is that the ortho's office gave us a little goodie bag which included, among other things, a bottle of sparkling cider! Whee!