Wisdom, Extracted

And the hands I had

What no one tells you about mothering is that one day you will be sitting in a waiting room that also serves as an office for someone named Janet with a ferret waiting for both of your teenage children to return to you from getting their mouths cut open.

I said yes to my children’s wisdom teeth removal surgery on the same day and called it good parenting.

Look, I love efficiency. I’m an efficiency aficionado (efficientado?). Efficiency is my jam. I don’t leave a room without a handful of found things that are meant to be homed into other rooms. I even sing a little song about it so I don’t forget which thing goes where.

So when the doctor told us we should do them both at the same time, it made some sense to me. But it also raised some concerns. My oldest is eighteen and my youngest is fifteen. He leaves for college in two months. His wisdom teeth were already through the gum, doing what wisdom teeth do best, which is get in the way.

Fifteen seems so young for this surgery and her teeth hadn’t even broken the surface yet. It felt like we were just lumping her into a two-for-one deal for the sake of efficiency. But we were told it was perfectly fine and it didn’t matter. I wasn’t so sure.

Doctors have all their doctory reasons to suggest certain things but they aren’t the ones herding hungover humans at home.

Whether it was right or wrong doesn’t matter at this point because it’s already been done, but we should always trust our mother’s instinct. That’s the first rule in Mom Club.

When I had my absolutely unnecessary stupid extra teeth removed, I was in college. I was twenty years old, which feels like the correct age to yank evolutionary leftovers from a mouth.

And I ate pizza the first night. I had no good parents to tell me that this was not a good idea, but yeah. I had pizza on night one of having four holes instead of four teeth.

My kids did not have pizza on night one. My kids couldn’t locate their mouths on night one.

Not one bit of it was something I was prepared for, and I am prepared for everydamnthing. I do not trust well, so I travel heavy. I am set for any sort of disaster or need at all times. And the moments I've let my guard down and trusted something I don't know, only for it to turn out to be a lie, does not sit well.

Nobody thinks it’s important to tell you that your children come back from anesthesia as completely different people. In a what-the-hell-have-you-done-with-my-son way. That was the first infraction.

The plan was always to have him go first, get him settled at home while she’s having hers done and then bring her home. And that sure sounds super easy on paper. So that’s what we did. I’m not a tooth robber, so I let them make the call.

My son is not a nervous guy. Never has been. And he’d never tell you if he were. This is the kid who will be sick for days and not say anything until day five when he’s on the mend. He just doesn’t like to draw attention to himself. And keeps most things inside. His threshold for pain is, and always has been, immense. His entry into the world was very painful so this is just how he does life.

Then there’s my daughter, who makes sure you’re fully aware of all the letters forming words into feelings and thoughts at all times. She gets nervous easily, which she will be very clear about. He was cool as a cucumber pre-surgery and she was a wiggly giggly mess.

I thought I’d be able to walk back with them. Hold their hand as they went under. Be holding it when they open their eyes. But they just took my kids away from me and I didn’t like it.

They took her back for hers before they brought him to me and let me tell you… sitting in Ferret Janet’s office alone while your babies are either about to be put under and cut into or having just been put under and cut into is not a settling place to be. Even if it’s only teeth they’re after.

I paced the halls, fiddled with the pretend teeth on the desk, counted ferrets. Waiting rooms are stupid and should be called Worry Rooms. They should let me name more things.

When they finally wheeled him out to me, he was hunched over, shaking and coughing. He couldn’t lift his head up. He couldn’t open his eyes. He couldn’t talk. He looked unfinished. It was absolutely mortifying, but the second rule in Mom Club is to act like everything is fine when you’re feeling like everything is not fine.

Getting him into the car was like rolling a boulder up a mud hill. He was not my kid and I hated it.

After all this child went through in his entry into the world, seeing him not ok again was just really unsettling. I started to resent teeth. These fucking bones back there that we don’t even need still show up and then we have to have someone cut our mouths open to dig them out because our teeth don’t need to be food processors anymore. Teeth are dumb and they’ve hurt my kid and I want to speak to the manager.

He got sick in the car and at home. And when the nausea lessened, he started to mumble the same things on a loop.

“Did you see me on laughing gas?” “Is this what being drunk feels like? I don’t like this feeling.” And then he thanked everyone for their help.

And honestly, that sounds exactly like drunk college me. I hated the feeling of being drunk, but always took it too far and would get sick. Then I’d call everyone the next morning to apologize and thank them for their assistance.

He finally was able to be changed into clean clothes and set on the couch to rest. He fell asleep immediately in his ice pack headband looking like a defeated prize fighter who didn’t even know he’d been in a fight.

Meanwhile, sister’s surgery is almost done and I’m on the phone trying to find out how the hell we’re supposed to get this passed-out man new gauze in his mouth after being sick and also eat something in order to take his pain meds that he’s required to take right now.

How has no one else thought about this? The instructions make it sound like a toddler could do it… take them home, change the gauze as needed, keep icing, wait for the anesthesia to wear off, get some food in their system immediately and take their medicine immediately… which you also have to go pick up. All while babysitting a vomiting linebacker.

He’s finally settled at home and my daughter gets wheeled out. And this child came back to me as a circus performer. Confidently chatty with not one coherent thing coming out of her swollen and gauze-stuffed mouth. And drunk, fully drunk. The good kind of drunk that fifteen-year-olds are not supposed to know about.

She climbed into my car backwards. Started with the wrong lead-in leg and ended up facing the wrong way. Which, having shared a bed with this child, completely tracks. She sleeps sideways.

She started a dozen conversations on the drive home and never finished a single one. She was also very vocal about the laughing gas. A lot about not liking Taylor Swift. She kept showing me her arm where her IV was and calling everything her IV. “They couldn’t find my veins in my IV.” “My IV is still there!” She kept rolling down the window to go for a run, and asking where her face went.

She never once got sick, stayed alert and weird, and the only challenge in getting her ready for the living room resting stage was that it felt like I was removing clothes from one of those flailing blow-up things at a used car lot. So much wiggling. She kept putting her clothes back on as I’d take them off like a damn farce and thought she could move freely when she could not even stand on her own.

When she saw her sleeping brother on the couch, she started walking like a cartoon burglar to “stay quiet.” And since I was holding her by the waist behind her and didn’t want her to think she was out of her mind, I also had to walk like a cartoon burglar. Just a two-woman conga line, Thriller dancing down the hallway. I about lost her in the guest room to a throw pillow race.

I got her changed and put new gauze in her mouth but immediately had to change it again. She was bleeding so much. So much more than we were told with the whole bullshit stained sack of lies in “you’ll only need to change the gauze a couple times within the first couple hours or so.”

I tried to get her to drink some yogurt for her meds to be taken but she couldn’t remember how to eat. And she tried. Hard. Stared at herself in the mirror like she was rehearsing for a one-woman show. Her mouth was so numb and she forgot how tongues worked. She was also drooling. A lot. So I’m holding this tiny human upright while blood-swirled yogurt is dripping down her chin.

Sometimes she thinks it’s hilarious. Other times I keep losing her as she leans right. But she is absolutely trying to behave like this is just a normal Tuesday.

And honestly, that sounds exactly like drunk college me too. I’d never admit to being drunk and worked so very hard to perform sober instead of leaning into the fact that I was absolutely off-my-rocker wasted.

I moved her to the chair opposite her sleeping brother and because she won’t stop talking about her IV and her disinterest in Taylor Swift, he is now awake.

His eyes shoot open and they stare at each other. Like aliens finally connecting. They’re both in their ice hats but don’t know that they are. They only see the other one in an ice hat so they’re asking questions about the appearance of the ice hat.

And by questions, I mean point and mumble. They are communicating through some foreign sibling language that they seem to fully understand. He doesn’t remember much. He asks what he looked like when he came out. I told him he didn’t look like himself and that he was in a lot of pain.

“What was that like seeing me like that? Was it scary for you?” My sweet boy. Concerned about me when he’s in so much pain.

“It was hard, buddy. It was really scary, but I’m glad you’re better now.”

“Can I have the Oreo yogurt now?”

And she’s slowly becoming one with the chair.

I tell them both to stay put and try to rest.

I head to the bathroom to grab a tissue for LL Drool J and come back to both of them standing in the middle of the living room dancing. They’re dancing. These two drunkards are bandaged up, swollen, and they are dancing.

I tuck them back into their resting places and go back to the bathroom for more gauze. I walk back out two seconds later and they’re dancing again. I tell them to sit back down and I’ll give them some sorbet if they would just sit the hell down.

They sit down. I make a freezer run and come back to them standing up in the living room arm in arm.

“You should take our picture,” my son says. This kid has never once asked for a photo. And he wants this moment documented?

She’s in my oversized sweatpants and my oldest t-shirt covered in bloody drool. They’re both in chin-strap ice hats and have never looked happier.

I take their picture and they continue posing. He looks at her. She looks at him. They both look at each other. Both look at me. Her hand around his shoulder, which is a stretch for that little arm. Just happy as a bucket of drunk clams, these two.

I finally get them both back down, mostly through threats involving sorbet, and I see that my damp daughter can’t close her mouth. This explains the drooling. She’s small. The gauze she’s having to bite down on is not. And she’s bleeding fairly heavily. Her brother is not. Whatever version of not-fine-ness he had right after his surgery has now disappeared. He’s pizza confident.

So I grab something for her to mop up the drool. And since I’m me and prefer to not throw things away and instead re-purpose them, the thing I grab is one of their old burp cloths. Those things are lovely snot wipers for any age because they’re weathered and soft. I highly recommend all of you young parents out there hold onto them. I even have one for my guitar to wipe the finger oils from the strings before I tuck her back into her case.

I also keep my picks in a Sucrets tin if I’m taking questions.

She takes it and tucks it into her chin hat and drools away. My baby girl.

Third rule of Mom Club: You will use whatever’s in the house. Nobody’s coming to save you.

She’s now chair-sunken, drunk-texting her friends and taking Japanese lessons. And he’s placing sports bets.

They both try to speak and I have to pretend they sound cool and normal. They do not. My daughter absolutely isn’t making one bit of consonant sound and my son thinks because he’s not throwing up anymore, he can make speeches.

I give them sorbet and it’s a disaster. Just nope. She’s bleeding while strawberry goo is free-falling from her lips and none of this is ok. He’s licking it from the ramekin he’s holding like it’s The One Ring. Nobody seems to remember how mouths work.

They start to talk about their laughing gas again. What it felt like, who saw them on it, where can they get some for their next dance party.

Please note that they both have lisps and sound like their tongues have been sacrificed. Still with lots of pointing. So much pointing. At each other. And themselves. Pointing and nodding in agreement like two tipsy disco monkeys.

He’s coming back online faster than she is, which feels unfair given he’s the one I watched get rolled out of there looking like a stringless puppet an hour earlier.

A couple hours later my son asked me to watch A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic, with him. This child does not know who Bob Dylan is. But I do, and hell yeah I’ll watch a movie with you, drunk buddy.

Sister isn’t up to it. She’s not doing great. And I don’t trust leaving her alone with all the blood drooling and weeble wobbling. So I prop her up Weekend at Bernie’s style in the corner with her Japanese, and he and I watch the very-too-long but fine movie.

My son, who does not approve of anyone getting up during a movie ever, gets up to talk numbness to his corner sister. It’s a very serious conversation.

But I’ve got both of them in the room with me and they’re finally sitting. I’ll take it.

And Daisy has decided that she needs to stay close to the little one. She doesn’t move from her side for hours.

The next morning I fed them oatmeal. Or tried to. My daughter ate hers with chopsticks.

She’s still not ok and he’s recovering at rapid speed, or at least really working hard to prove that he is. She’s still very swollen and quiet in a way that isn’t like her. Bleeding still. It’s hard to watch my little girl take this on so intensely and consider the fact that her teeth hadn’t even shown up as a problem yet. They were still under the surface and we were told it was ok to just go and cut them out.

That’s one of the most difficult parts of parenting. Watching your kids go through pain and struggle and knowing it could have been prevented, but you just aren’t sure if the current pain and suffering outweighs the future potential for further pain and suffering.

---

A week later they decide they’re going to the movies and out to lunch by themselves. They came downstairs and declared it the same way they declared their drunk dance party and photo session. They’ve bonded this year. They both quietly know he’s leaving soon and it’s their last year of things being how they’ve always known it. Right across the hall from one another. Just a knock knock away.

They were best friends when they were really little. He was so protective over her. He’d hug her so tightly. They’d snuggle all the time. And she thought he hung the galaxy. Then there were years in the middle when they didn’t really have a lot in common and sort of drifted in their own spaces around one another.

And then this year it all changed. They started to play and laugh again. They’d go thrift shopping together. They had conversations behind closed doors. It’s been incredible to witness.

And I think this surgery pulled them even closer to one another. They went through something hard and real together and are coming out of it together.

---

The day after their surgery, they both asked to watch a movie with me. My daughter and I have been working through the Jane Austen catalogue and he wanted to watch Emma with us.

The fourth rule of Mom Club is you never question when a child’s request comes from left field.

And unlike normal TV times where they’re scattered around the living room, they all piled on the couch with me. My two teenagers, all bandaged and iced up, right there with me on the couch. Willingly. I enjoyed the movie far more than I would have without them snuggled up next to me.

At some point our hands found each other. It was playful because it has to be with teenagers, but it was good and real. And all in one moment I felt the weight of my two children having gone through the most painful thing they’d ever gone through, my son’s pending exit, and the fact that we are just a family sitting on a couch watching a movie together.

I box this moment up and wrap it tightly in pretty paper. The good kind you save for the in-laws. This is what life is made of. Tiny moments of hands finding each other and saying more than words ever could.

Mom Club doesn’t have a fifth rule for this. There’s no rule for watching your kids come back to themselves to only lose one again two months later. The on purpose kind of losing that you know is coming the first moment you hold them in your arms. The inevitable moment that you push down deep inside of yourself and don’t worry about it until it’s right in front of you.

That’s the hope in raising kids, isn’t it? You shape them so they’re fit for the world without you. It’s a bittersweet, beautiful, and brutal task. But it’s the right one. You want them to want you, but you don’t want them to need you. And that’s the hardest thing to figure out.

If you do your job right as a parent, they will leave you happily. And they will come back to you willingly.

My mind will always hold onto the moment we all held hands on the couch. Their weird dance parties. Their on-demand photo session. Even the drool.

In my mind I will always be holding the hands I had while I had such easy access to them. It became a memory the moment it happened.

Wisdom comes in strange packages sometimes.

---

Thanks for reading and for being exactly who you are. I love you. I miss you💋