I had oral surgery today. I was to have my wisdom teeth extracted. The doctor removed only one. My conclusion of the day is that I love my mother.

(Anyone reading the past few entries might well be incredulous at that claim. So be it.)

I love my mother.

In the morning, RDC found the anniversary card I bought for him in Safeway at 10:00 p.m. yesterday, right where I left it, under the handle of the teapot. Piglet asks Pooh, "Why is the sky blue?" and Pooh replies, "To give us something to talk about." I don't particularly remember that from Milne (which isn't conclusive), but I bought it anyway because it was the only blank-inside card whose cover I could stand that I could find. I wrote inside that talking about things is a much better reason than the Denver Broncos sunsets that this city claims, and let's always be blasé about our anniversary.

We have never made much of it. The first year was a Leap Year, so June 24 fell on a Monday. We were driving home from the camping trip we'd taken as an anniversary treat and it was about 2:00 in the afternoon when I turned to him and said, "Oh by the way, happy anniversary." I don't remember the second year (which is proof in itself) and the third year, we were in RRP's house during our trip to Connecticut and he was peeing and I was brushing my teeth when I said over a mouthful of foam, "Oh by the way, happy anniversary." And I didn't realize until this past Monday what other significance the 24th held besides the surgery.

RDC says that he read somewhere (where? he doesn't read such stuff--or was it heard? that's more likely) that not making a big deal out of it is a sign of a happy marriage. I like that.

The practice that I consulted was very conscientious, which I liked, and insisted that the patient's ride bring and stay in addition to escort home. So off we went, me in a t-shirt I wouldn't mind bleeding onto and my overalls with Lyle in my pocket. I had other teeth extracted when I was seven or so--I don't remember why teeth had to come out but I call myself seven years old because I know I brought my Sears & Roebuck Winnie-the-Pooh (with a music box) with me. I still bring an animal with me but I guess I'm more grown-up than I prefer because I bring one who's small enough to fit inconspicuously in a pocket (I don't have a Piglet and that's all right because I don't much like his whiny scaredy-cat self).

I signed in and a desk nurse greeted me and asked if this was my friend. "Husband," RDC corrected. She said, smiling, that's a friend too, isn't it, and that she never knew what to say anymore and hating having to ask little [her adjective] girls if they were pregnant before she x-rayed them. One of my favorite Old Lyme characters stopped volunteering as a census-taker at blood drives when the screening questions got much more personal than she wanted to know--she couldn't ask her friends and neighbors that. Now she escorts folks to the recovery area or something.

Soon enough another nurse called me and I kissed RDC and she showed me into the theatre--which I call it because it was surgery but it was really only a regular dentist's set-up. She said her name was Gwen and she'd be with me throughout the procedure, and while I know she was a nurse there to assist, the way she put it made her sound like a patient's advocate. I liked that.

Gwen sat me down, wrapped my left arm in a blood-pressure cuff (every five minutes, automatically), fed my right thumb to an alligator clip to measure my pulse, and then apologized for her cold hands before she attached EKG pads to either side of my collar bone and above my hip--so it was good I wore overalls instead of the comfy dress I had considered. She asked if I was nervous and I said no, I was only suffering a torment of thirst (not having drunk a drop since bedtime--when I drank the last of the evening's five stockpiling pints).

So far I hadn't noticed anything particularly like my mother in her besides that she was old enough to be mine. She had complimented my hands when attaching the various bits to them, which I appreciated because I do like my hands, broad and muscular and capable (despite the pen callous on my middle finger having receded). My mother has never said anything like that because my fingernails match my hands' utilitarian aspects, being stubby capable things with only enough unvarnished white tip for backscratching and thus not aesthetically pleasing (to her).

Then Gwen rang for the doctor (I think he is a D.D.S. plus something), meaning the surgery was imminent and I might need to be comforted. She laid her hand on my cheek.

Headrush. Heartrush. Her hands felt just like my mother's. When RDC touches my face, the sensation is not maternal (as I'm sure he'd be glad to know). Perhaps no one else but my mother has ever cupped and cradled and caressed my chin, forehead, and cheeks and so the sort of touch was the only similarity. No, my grandmother has, of course, and did last weekend, and her hand felt different from this (and not just because she's 82).

The texture of the skin, the calm coolness, the gestures. Mom.

"Your hands feel like my mother's," I told her. "That's a good thing," I added, in case my tone was ambiguous.

When the doctor came in and (not at once) prepared to insert the IV, he warned me "Pinch on three." She kept her hand on the side of my face the whole time, and when with the pinch my right foot kicked, she patted it (my face--her arms weren't that long).

I don't know why I kick. The Red Cross equivalent in Colorado, Belle Bonfils, doesn't like my blood because I had Lyme Disease, which I told them about only because one of the screening questions is whether you've ever been deferred as a donor. I was once, when I tried to donate too soon after my antibiotics. The Red Cross liked me again after the proper wait, but for Bonfils Lyme Disease means I'm permanently tainted. But anyway before that, if not lately, I gave two gallons: it's not as if I'm unused to big needles and this was a tiny one.

We chatted, the three of us, me with my eyes closed, until I thought maybe I'd rather just listen. The next thing I remember was Gwen escorting me to a recovery room--which is where her resemblance to my mother ended abruptly. My mother used to make someone else tote the 25-pound bags of dogfood, claiming she couldn't. Gwen didn't carry me, but she did bear enough of my weight that I didn't collapse.

RDC was already there and when I lay down, he began to stroke my forehead and hair in a manner I did not at all confuse with anyone else's.

Certain things the doctor and RDC were speaking about jelled out of the confused mist. I still have my left lower wisdom tooth (I had the uppers out three years ago, which was nothing). The x-ray had shown how near the nerves lay to the teeth on both sides, but the left one snuggled particularly close. When the right tooth came out, the doctor saw the nerve in the socket. (That's the past tense of "to see," not the present indicative of "to saw," instead you worried about his sanity or my grammar). He figured the left molar presented much greater risk to the nerve and that it shouldn't come out unless it ever causes an acute problem, like rotting or impacting or exploding or committing espionage for a hostile country.

I lay numb and dumb for a spell, waking. When I recuperated somewhat, RDC went to move the car closer to the door, the back door, and I panicked. "I don't know about those stairs," I told Gwen. "The stairs are nothing," she said briskly, "and I'll help." And she did.

Again, no longer like BJWL.

Home, I watched "Babe: Pig in the City," missing bits during naps, ate some yogurt (Stoneyfield Organic Blueberry) so I could take Percocet and penicillin, and then watched "Ever After," missing fewer bits during fewer naps. I forgot to get "Austin Powers" last night but that's okay because RDC wanted to see it too and he was working and ignoring these flicks. The second "Babe" was fun for kids, with lots of animals, but the woman who ran the hotel reminded me too much of the Octopus in "La Cité des Infants Perdu" (and thus scared me) and overall I thought it too contrived. It wasn't the Hoggetts' hotel, so how could its sale save the farm? And if Babe bought the farm, does that mean he's finally pork chops? And the closing credits had that gruesome song Peter Gabriel sang during the Oscars. I don't care of Kymm considers it blasphemy, but if that tune is typical of Randy Newman's songs, then he can damn well sing his work himself instead of imprisoning Peter Gabriel's fabulous voice in the cloven pine of its limitations. "Ever After" was as silly and pointless as I expected and wanted. Danielle's father gave her Utopia (published 1516) and then ten years later, during the meat of the story, Leonardo da Vinci appeared in the French Court with Mona Lisa--which he did do, except not in 1526 but before 1519, when he died. Also I slept.

During the twilight of my consciousness, I realized I wanted to write a letter to my mother telling her about the surgery, that it had gone well, and that the best part of it was the nurse whose hands felt just hers, and how much I missed her touching me like that.

When I arrived on Saturday, we hugged, and she walked CLH and me out to the car when we left on Monday, and as she walked, she held out a hand and I took it. And she pinned the suit pants for me and suggested I keep the shirt not tucked (to cover the pin), and she told me about a black lab at the Saybrook DQ who knocked her aside as it stood up with its front paws on the counter for its daily cup of vanilla ice milk and whose master paid enough money to buy my mother's treat (apologizing rather for the dog's manners), and she asked the clerk to save the money for the next person who needed it (!!!), and she and BDL are happy; and all of those are good things but I will never understand how her finally being happy with someone else should coincidentally mean as well that she and I suddenly be happy and without baggage.

Instead I'm writing this, which I have no reason to believe she will ever read, except a reader older than I told me his mother (presumably older than mine) just got a tangerine iMac so mine might not be far behind. During setback Sunday BDL said something about Dells or Gateways (which he uses on his lunch hour and if he crashes or freezes them, just leaves them; how courteous) and asked why I like Macintosh. I didn't consider whom I addressed and gave my usual answer, which includes Gates being the Antichrist. Oops! But later in the evening he said "Gosh darn it," which I consider just hypocritical slang for "God damn it," so if I offended his religion, well, so did he.

On Father's Day when I talked to RSH he also was disappointed Grampy's wishes weren't respected and he laughed at my being a basilisk (except for him I called the glare Kryptonite since I figure he doesn't know what a basilisk i)s, and today (in yesterday's mail) I discovered a letter from him advising I let go of the anger because it's not healthy for me and after all, she shall never change (and a late birthday card from "thine own" DEDBG).

Which is correct, and which I knew as well as I knew that venting all that recent spleen does nothing to improve anything. Venting orally is one thing; the words are spoken, the invective over, and while I do believe speaking gives words power, the strength fades with the sound. Venting verbally gives the thoughts the power of permanency on paper and the power of publicity on the web. Neither power is one I should imbue my resentment with.

Because as Yoda says, fear leads to anger leads to hate leads to suffering or whatever. I remember it better from A Swiftly Tilting Planet: "You have cause to be angry....Anger is not bitterness. Bitterness can go on eating a man's heart and mind forever. Anger spends itself in its own time." Now is the time, as it has been for years.

It's 7:07 and I'm writing this and the surgeon just called to see how I am. He gave me a fuller reason for not extracting the left than I had earlier understood: yes, the x-ray showed the left tooth closer to the nerve on its side than the right one and thus posed more of a risk, but he stopped primarily because he feared the right nerve had already been damaged and he didn't want to risk numbing both sides of my face, perhaps permanently. I told him that I was pleased for him to have made that decision and that RDC had power of attorney (he doesn't really) to agree with that decision and how gratified I was by the level of care shown by all the staff and that while I appreciated his prudence, as far as I can tell I haven't lost sensation. I keep touching my jaw from ear to chin with pens and the phone and the like so I know whatever I feel is my face and not my finger. I think my jaw will be fine.

Now I wish I could say as much for my relationship with my mother.