It Was Only Yesterday

Week Twenty-one: Sunday 18 – Saturday 24 February

The other day our screenwriting lecturer said to us as we packed up, ‘It’s amazing how quickly three hours can go.’ I was thinking about my daughter’s impending third birth day when he said it, and was just saying in my mind, ‘It’s amazing how quickly three years can go.’

The night before, my wife, daughter and I had been looking through the photo albums that we have kept since our daughter was born. It did only seem like yesterday that she was born and surrounded by cousins, aunties, uncles, grandparents and friends: since she could be held in one hand; since she was breast-fed; since she wore all in ones and not pyjamas; since she started to crawl, learnt to walk and run; since she got her teeth one by one; since she started to talk.

And now, at the ripe old age of three, she is an individual in her own right. She is a bundle of joy and life, happiness and satisfaction; she has elements of her mama and elements of her papa, but she brings a whole character and personality all of her own.

No fewer than two meals and two cakes, spread over two days, to celebrate her third birth day, and a rendition of ‘Happy Birth Day To You’ from the teachers and children at nursery: it was quite a celebration.

Parcels and cards also arrived well into the week, making it a prolonged celebration; with the cards ‘blu-tacked’ to the walls, the memory of the celebrations lingers on.

The only blight on the occasion has been the return of the dreaded toothache! I was all due for root canal treatment in early February, and had psyched myself up for the challenge. I first went to see the dentist before Christmas; she pocked about a bit, took x-rays and told me I needed root canal treatment on one of my teeth. She put a temporary filling in and fixed me up to return in February. I only had one four-day spell of toothache over the festivities; nurofen every four hours saw to that.

When I turned up for the root canal I was told it was no longer an option; I’d have to get the tooth out. I was told it could be done there and then; I wasn’t prepared for that, so I declined. I got an appointment for 20 March and shuffled out, please not to have had my choppers rattled and drilled and interfered with.

But, midday through last week, the toothache returned; nurofen made no difference. After three days I bought a bottle of malt whisky; whenever the nerve awakens and growls, sending tears to my eyes and a desire to rip the bloody tooth out by hand to my heart, I bathe it in a mouthful of Scottish medicine. It works a treat, and you get pissed enough eventually not to feel anything anyway.

I can’t really justify carrying on such a pain relief operation until 20 March, though; I need an emergency appointment and I need to get that tooth out.

It isn’t so much the idea of getting it out that bothers me, it’s the implications of getting it out: aging. Just as it’s amazing how quickly three hours and three years can go, it’s amazing how quickly 42 years can go, amazing how quickly life can go; does go.

Like an old car being removed from the roadway, a tooth has to come out because it has ceased to function. My hair started leaving my head and re- appearing out my nose and ears a while back, the first ‘condemned’ tooth has been sentenced; how long before I find myself needing glasses?

No point getting down about it, though. Seriously. You can’t reverse the natural aging process; all you can do is look after yourself and live in the here and now.

Amen to that. Where’s that bottle of malt?