All I want for Christmas is my 3 front teeth

The hag arrives

Something has changed. Let’s see. What is it?

Oh yes, my teeth fell out.

A three teeth bridge in the front of my mouth broke off with a bite of toast and fell into my hand. A gaping hole now interrupts my wide smile. I suddenly have a different face, and find, surprisingly, that it doesn’t matter as much to me as I might have thought.

Ah! My hag has arrived.

I wonder - what other pretenses can I let go of?

Does my wardrobe - full of sass, patterned tights, short skirts, ruffles, and layers - still appeal to this one, the hag? Is it time to don fleece, sweatshirts, and sweatpants or pajama bottoms, and let the effort to be “put together” fall apart?

I wonder if I will be one of those solitary older people who doesn’t realize their clothes are scuffed or stained. What other appearances will I let go of instead of keeping up?

Will the sentence, “I can’t keep up with music or the news anymore” come out of my lips (now no longer well supported by full frontal chops)?

Is it important to keep up the “powder and lace” so people will visit if /when I can’t get out of my chair? Do I need to buy an electric lazy boy?

Is this why old people feel invisible - that something about us reminds others of the fragility of their teeth and other necessities?

Is the world losing it’s mind, or at least it’s bridges? Am I projecting my penny-ante woes onto a world with a billion-ante woes - upheavals in Korea, Syria, fires and floods, and now the worrisome administration howling at the door of the great house?

Just because my aging teeth - and more - are closer to the end doesn’t mean the beautiful green world won’t come back in the spring. Stop catastrophizing. Right?

Going public

A week after I lost my three front teeth, I was scheduled to give a local talk about mutual aid as things fall further apart (or out or down) “out there.” Like teeth and bridges and long supply chains.

It was my first public talk in years.

For the decades I promoted Your Money or Your Life as a path out of consumerism, I had a winning smile (see photo above). That smile did not launch a thousand ships but was partially responsible for selling well over a million books.

That smile opened doors, lubricated conversations, and got me speaking slots that were 10 rungs over my pay or talent grade. That smile.

I’ve not known what to say for at least five years, given I’d said in hundreds of speeches and two thousand interviews that consumerism is killing the living earth, yet consumerism has only gotten worse. Case in point: Black Friday. Back then it was still confined to the day after Thanksgiving. On Amazon this year Black Friday ads started in October.

We don’t abandon elders because they are old

Since writing Coming of Aging, though, I’ve learned that later life - my life, the lives of millions of species - is full of lessons and learning. You don’t abandon anyone or anything because the rigors of time are wearing them down. No. You love them more tenderly.

So it is with my community. Now in the thick of what my colleagues call the great unraveling, I have a lot of kind and useful things to say.

My first big toothless smile

I did have the old 3-tooth bridge in a jar in my bathroom, and some Polident, so I could literally paste on a smile and give the talk.

I’d tried that at marimba dance a few days earlier and the teeth quickly came loose.

Rather than scurry out, eyes averted, covering my mouth, I laughed. I turned to a friend next to me and flashed my toothless grin. She laughed, we hugged and danced and what else do we do when the winds of change are howling outside and the bridge at the north end of the island could crack in the next earthquake. Never has my social credibility shot up so fast as when I let down and smiled.

And that’s what happened with the talk called Community as Currency. Everyone was with me, laughing, and then dead serious as I made my case about preparing together for the bigger storms ahead.

Maybe some of my pretenses fell out too with that bite of toast.