those teeth

For five years we brushed those teeth, twice a day, often for whole seconds at a time. Five years – almost her whole life – we made her drink milk – made her, and when she asked why she had to drink milk, I would tap my front teeth and say the same thing – “gives you strong choppers.” And then one Friday in August, she misses a monkey bar at camp, and dives face-first to the ground below – teeth-first, really – and Sarah gets a phone call, and the dentist sends them to the surgeon, and the nitrous oxide is produced, and those teeth, the ones we scrubbed so faithfully, the ones she applied to corn and toast and broccoli and string cheese, to say nothing of the sugar donuts she’d had for breakfast that very day, those teeth are suddenly in a tiny plastic sleeve, handed off to Mom on her way back home to summon the tooth fairy. 

And for all the concern, for all the furrowed brows on all the foreheads of parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and friends and neighbors, for all the pitying clucks she gets from everyone who hears the story, she cannot thtop thmiling, thowing off what’th no longer there and crowing about the lucre under her pillow.

Two bucks a pop. Seemed like a good place to start.  

   

 

to all the ladies in the house

For some reason, I expected Switzerland to be super-advanced, particularly on women’s issues. I don’t know – nothing specific, I just figured it was one of those places where women lead and hold fancy positions and get all kinds of respect that they don’t get elsewhere.

I think I had it mixed up with Sweden, is all.

Turns out, it’s a pretty traditional country, which is fine in a lot of ways, but which isn’t great if you’re a woman and you want to work outside the home. I’m told that women are expected to work part-time or not at all, and the way society enforces this is simple: Swiss schools let out for an hour and a half in the middle of the day. Kids go home for lunch. And someone’s got to be there. (Sarah’s working for an American company, so things are a little different.)

So anyway, there’s that. On the other hand, there’s plenty of good parking available. Like at the library, on the top of the underground parking garage, closest to the cashier. For damen only. A whole row of ’em.