Indecisive Peach

In January, still enamored with having steady health insurance, I decided to go and see what an orthodontist would say to my teeth. Now in a family of Germans and Scottish, I came out with a hint of Austin Powers teeth. Both my parents had neatly aligned teeth, so, they never thought to open my jaw like a horse to divine the quality of mine. The German efficiency was tossed aside when it should have been, “Dear child, you have some nice acne and are sufficiently awkward now, why not amp it up with some braces and when you’re in your mid twenties, you’ll be able to just remember all that, with vengeance, as just building character?”

No.

So, I wiggle around as I sit for a mold of my teeth and smile wider than I do naturally for my Before Shot. The consult with both the doctor, a laid back Texan, and his business end, his polished early-fifties ex-cheerleader wife, went well. He told me that I had a whole slew of problems, crossbite, overbite, orthoitis of this and orthoitis of that with a bout of snaggle. A little of this and bit of that and in 20-24 months, you’ll be set. Holy moses, two years, I thought and sunk into my chair. Oh, and before we start, get your wisdom teeth removed, missy. He gets up to shake my hand.

Right.

With the business end, I nodded blankly to the figures, still mulling the time in my head. Now in January, I was still thinking Japan! and Sushi! and Hot Japanese Guys! so I told them I needed to wait, but that I’d take them up on the wisdom teeth idea and after that I’d get back to them. I set up for the wisdom teeth removal, blessedly only the top because the miracle of evolution made me not have any on the bottom, and this is another story not to be told here except that you know that someone loves you when they take wads of your blood-soaked bandages and only wrinkle their face.

[Thanks J. ^_^]

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It seems that there is a mythic type of parent-child relation, the time when the child realizes that the parent is very much human and fallible. That it can be a bit of a disappointment in what you’ve built as a small frame for the world. Not that I particularly think it’s a good thing (and nor do I blame my parents for it), but the fact that I was able to experience it very early allowed me to integrate that into who I was even as a teenager. Somehow, I felt that it gave me equal amounts of exasperation and compassion toward my parents.

I would wager to say that what I’ve been grappling with lately is also something very potent in terms of recognizing yourself inside or outside the models of life that your parents created for you – specifically, how well do their values align to what you feel is right for how you want to approach your life? There is a lot of nagging in my mind on the naivete that is espoused in value creation. If I am firm and resolute about something now because of the experiences I’ve had, will I be a sell out if I change my mind when I’m older and these things do not apply? Or I realize that they didn’t mean the same compared to what I thought they did right now?

My Dad’s favorite saying that he liked to impart to me was, “Live to work or work to live?” He was very, very anti-establishment, as much as one could be being in the military. He refused to play nice for a lot of things sometimes, in the theoretical vein of, ‘Why play nice, when one has ethics to stand up for?’

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For me, it never fails that the reflection of a past year tends to be a matter of thinking about how random life actually can be and that the best laid plans really can be even better than what you thought they might be from the onset.

I’m approaching this in a positive light because this year has been pretty damn swell. Granted, there are still roughly sixty days left and sure, there are nuggets of discontent, but when viewed in the glow of the environment, everything is peachy.

A year ago everything was incredibly stable, but also with this strange malaise of looming change. My Mom would be making the change to Germany, yet we had no idea how quickly this would happen at the time. I was in a terrifically horrible relationship that equated to a complete waste in time and effort. I was applying to the JET program, trying to take a blind leap of faith out of the system.

2009.

It turned out that my Mom’s call to the universe helped clear her mind for the better. It turned out that there was a cheerful young man I needed to meet and fall in love with. It turned out that with the first application I got at least runner up placement and as non-Japanese speaking, non-certified teacher I felt that was a very pleasant outcome to my waffling query of the universe.

What I did realize is that being severely pointed in discussions with the universe (and yes, this unfortunately meant in the completely New Age tint) is probably the best way to go about things. Waffling has been my m.o. for a very long time, but somehow…things need to change and I need to change them. Step one: more writing.

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