Buona Pasquetta**

Or, Post-Easter Greetings from a (Wisdom)-Toothless 70-Something

**It was Pasquetta when I started writing this, and optimistically titled it with the Italian greeting meaning Happy Easter Monday! Then of course I didn’t finish it (I’m blaming post-dental-extraction fatigue although some blame might properly be aimed at my joining friends for Happy Hour (non-alcoholic in deference to dental healing). And if I stop to re-consider and re-title this morning, I’m flirting with Substack paralysis. Instead, I’m setting my timer, finishing this draft, and sending it out before noon!

Just sending you this quick newsletter to confirm that I have mostly survived the extraction of my four wisdom teeth. Also to let you know that he procedure and convalescence were both better than, and as bad as, I’d feared and been warned; that I’ve been very grateful to have had a spectacular outburst of Spring as background for my whining, lolling, and meds-swallowing; and that somewhere in all of this I’m feeling tiny, barely perceptible shifts that I’m curious to follow as my strength returns.

That’s probably too much information to cram into any paragraph, but particularly an introductory one. If you’re still here, let me first show you what I mean about the exuberant Spring backdrop:

Lime-rhubarb combo of the ornamental maple — every Spring, it wipes away all the doubts we had through its poor, scorched performance in the late autumn, and we commit to another season. The dainty flowers, the unpleating leaves. The landing spot it offers to house sparrows and hummingbirds alike for post-bath preening.

Epimedium. Don’t get me started — I cannot sing its Spring praises enough. . .

The textures and twists and rich neutral tones of a star magnolia and just behind, clusters of apple blossoms ready to open apple tree at the next tickle of sunlight.

I’ll pause the slide-show briefly to tell you that the sedative I was given before my wisdom teeth were pulled, one by one, muted the discomfort inflicted by the needle injecting the local anaesthetic (but I was still able to count and wince at that stage). After that, I mostly remember the dentist occasionally cradling my skull, presumably to get just the right angle, tension, torque to pull a big old molar. From my sedated position, it all felt very gentle. Not the trauma or pain that I’d been braced against for weeks, albeit I hadn’t acknowledged such bracing.

And then Paul wrangled my sedated self to the car and home, and he immediately picked up the prescription so that I could start on the pain meds and anti-inflammatory and anti-biotics right away, as advised by the 17yo g-daughter who’d beat me to this little rite of passage by a few months in calendar-year time, and almost a half-century in age at removal.

So that all I felt for the first two or three days post-surgery was a lightness. A lightness that I assumed was a shucking-off of tension I hadn’t even realized I was carrying — or, at least, not to what degree I had been affected.

The surgery was Wednesday afternoon, and besides the lightness I felt crushing fatigue for the first two days, but no pain at all. A revelation, after all I’d dreaded. All was good except the management of the meds — one every four hours, one every six, and one every twelve. That “every six hours” meant waking at some point in the wee hours, and once awake, this was a med to be taken with a big glass of water and, ideally, food. Also, instructions were to remain upright for at least half an hour afterward. As a longtime reflux sufferer, I took this direction seriously, and I happily harness myself to discipline if it means less pain and no infection.

By Day Three, though, the pain and the anti-inflammatory meds were doing a jingly-jangly thing to my nervous system, and dizziness was vying with drowsiness and being overcome by insomnia. So. I let myself be coaxed outside by the spectacular weather, logged 6 kilometres over a couple of walks hoping the activity might help me sleep. And then I decided to let go of the pain pills and the anti-inflammatory because I wasn’t feeling any pain so why did I need those?

You’ve spotted the little problem of circular reasoning, haven’t you?

Yes, and it only took a couple of days for me to catch on and do a bit of thinking about the half-life of more serious medication than I’m normally used to. Aha! So I could stop worrying that (moderate, not heavy) pain seemed to be increasing when I’d thought it was almost done. And I’ve been popping the odd Tylenol since as I come to the end of the antibiotics (two more days, including one more nighttime dose — I’ve been spacing these out more to get a solid seven consecutive hours).

I go back for a check in a couple of weeks, but all seems to be going very well, and I’m thinking a bit about how much I resisted this for so many decades, and then worried about it for at least a few months, and that soon it will just be another small-ish hurdle I stepped over. . . Easy to say, retrospectively. . .

But the lightness I’m feeling, very well supported by a gorgeous spate of Spring sunshine (my mason bees are emerging; I’ll post photos and videos soon), is effecting some teeny shifts, and I’m sitting with those right now. I think another factor is the slowing-down that even a minor convalescence insists on. I’ve been getting out for walks, getting my daily six kilometres, and I made my weekly batch of bread, but I’ve let go of most other expectations for the week. And the “airier” schedule that this disrupted rhythm has made is reminding me somehow of the Covid times. Of what was strangely precious about that, even if I wouldn’t wish it on us ever again.

Also, my thinking this week may well have been affected by those various meds swishing through my circulatory and digestive and neural systems with their promises and warnings of mood changes and side effects — I was very optimistic about the potential “euphoria” of the preparatory sedative, for example, and while it didn’t manifest recognizably at the time, perhaps the Spring display is triggering a milder stirring-up of that potential. Hence the stirrings. . .

For now, I’ll share a few more photos, and then I’m off to rustle up something soft for lunch, which I’m going to eat while reading Rachel Joyce’s A Homemade God.

The wonder of a Maidenhair fern unfurling its palmate leaves atop a curling wand. Never gets old!

Ribes sanguineum (Flowering Red Currant) — I’ve been finding the scent of this warmer and woodier, this year, than I remember. I’ve generally experienced it as more “cat pee” — Sorry, keeping it real here — but there’s a good stretch of these shrubs in the landscaping along the waterfront nearby, and the fragrance is noticeably enticing walkers and runners to slow their stride.

I have more photographs and snippets and maunderings and witterings, but I’m running out of time and energy, so I will leave you with this little video of wind, water, and maple meeting. . . Against the world news today, I confess my vulnerability in focussing on these small, immediate signs of hope and joy. And yet, where, otherwise can we draw strength to continue?

Somehow I, at least, find some kind of hope — and imagine that hope as some kind of resistance — in continuing to write my quotidian domestic and in insisting on its importance. And placing hope as well in you reading my words, in our solidarity, our community. Thanks for being here. Perhaps you will share your own hopes, perhaps some kindnesses observed and shared, some burdens lifted, challenges navigated, small encouragements, glimmers of joy. . . .

Comments, hearts clicked, always welcome.

xo,

f