Smile Through It
My smile got smashed
and ran away.
My socketed skull has been drilled,
some holes filled with bone
and other holes filled with
titanium pegs
that my gums are lashed over,
so someday
I might smile bright
without a plastic false-front
or a glaring incongruous gap.
I might not, it's hard to know
how things will go.
But for now,
it's all of the above.
But,
it's fine,
it's fine.
I'm fine.
I'm healing.
I was very smart,
listening to myself
and taking all my time off to just...
sleep, cry, and zone out
while everything
HAPPENED.
Now its back to work, work, work,...
.... and there is plenty of it!
And there is other news,
since my Mother learned her cousin
(my 2nd cousin)
had a stroke and will need settled in A Home
or need a live-in person to help him stay
"independent"
and Mom is ready for a winter with
electric heat, hot water, television
and society....
instead of her Hermitage on the mountaintop
no power, no running water,
where she is snowed in completely
for 4-6 weeks a year
with her old dog
and 5 horses.
She will take a bedroom in his house,
and they've known each other since they were children.
They get along when no one else gets along with either of them for long.
It seems a natural choice.
Her cousin was a child prodigy until he had 1950s brain surgery
which spared his life
but cut his IQ in half.
But in my family it is never simple.
This cousin DOES live in town,
(down the street from us)
and has room to share.
And that is nice;
that is simple.
BUT he is also the sort of person
who even though he's an 80 year old man
with a slight frame
and mental/emotional disabilities
who lived with his mother his whole life
until she died 15 years ago
AND
who just had a stroke....
..... that the hospital QUICKLY learns he can only be tended by male nurses
because MOST females are made
**very**
uncomfortable by him.
He has... a way about him.
A way that once made my mom so worried,
she called the FBI
in case he was the local serial killer
terrorizing the region's college girls
as the handsome youngish man
driving a white VW Beetle,
just like her cousin drove.
He never treated her that way,
but she saw him treat OTHER girls/women that way
stalking some of her girlfriends,
for instance.
She saw him fixate
and he told her about his fantasies...
... about his anger
when he was still a young man
and Ted Bundy was not yet caught and identified.
So, Mommala is planning to move from one strange cold dark danger
to another, as far as I can tell.
But she's hopeful
and helpful,
and admittedly... needs a change.
This is me,
Not Scared At All.
Promise.
and ran away.
My socketed skull has been drilled,
some holes filled with bone
and other holes filled with
titanium pegs
that my gums are lashed over,
so someday
I might smile bright
without a plastic false-front
or a glaring incongruous gap.
I might not, it's hard to know
how things will go.
But for now,
it's all of the above.
But,
it's fine,
it's fine.
I'm fine.
I'm healing.
I was very smart,
listening to myself
and taking all my time off to just...
sleep, cry, and zone out
while everything
HAPPENED.
Now its back to work, work, work,...
.... and there is plenty of it!
And there is other news,
since my Mother learned her cousin
(my 2nd cousin)
had a stroke and will need settled in A Home
or need a live-in person to help him stay
"independent"
and Mom is ready for a winter with
electric heat, hot water, television
and society....
instead of her Hermitage on the mountaintop
no power, no running water,
where she is snowed in completely
for 4-6 weeks a year
with her old dog
and 5 horses.
She will take a bedroom in his house,
and they've known each other since they were children.
They get along when no one else gets along with either of them for long.
It seems a natural choice.
Her cousin was a child prodigy until he had 1950s brain surgery
which spared his life
but cut his IQ in half.
But in my family it is never simple.
This cousin DOES live in town,
(down the street from us)
and has room to share.
And that is nice;
that is simple.
BUT he is also the sort of person
who even though he's an 80 year old man
with a slight frame
and mental/emotional disabilities
who lived with his mother his whole life
until she died 15 years ago
AND
who just had a stroke....
..... that the hospital QUICKLY learns he can only be tended by male nurses
because MOST females are made
**very**
uncomfortable by him.
He has... a way about him.
A way that once made my mom so worried,
she called the FBI
in case he was the local serial killer
terrorizing the region's college girls
as the handsome youngish man
driving a white VW Beetle,
just like her cousin drove.
He never treated her that way,
but she saw him treat OTHER girls/women that way
stalking some of her girlfriends,
for instance.
She saw him fixate
and he told her about his fantasies...
... about his anger
when he was still a young man
and Ted Bundy was not yet caught and identified.
So, Mommala is planning to move from one strange cold dark danger
to another, as far as I can tell.
But she's hopeful
and helpful,
and admittedly... needs a change.
This is me,
Not Scared At All.
Promise.