Navigating while crafting the sea of language back when my then 15-year old daughter underwent wisdom teeth surgery

My oldest adult child is now a 30 year old nonbinary person named Dylan Blair, and I love them so very much in the way a doty old father stubbornly loves them from nearly 3,000 miles away. I’m bad with pronouns and get my tenses all mixed up. Always have been even before pronouns were a socio-cultural evolution of diversity and inclusion in our chaotic world. Always scrambled my tenses, too. Yet they remind me, still do, and forgive me anyway. Usually. I think. For I do my best to honor one’s choices, and, yes, I mess up sometimes.

Stumbled upon versions of this one foto during a now decades-long project to recover, clean, sort, organize, and share pictures salvaged from the March 2010 house fire. It’s somewhat of an iconic foto in our family. Felt inspired to write about it. Back then, Dylan was known by her birth name Morgan Hannah, or just Morgan. Her mother, Gwen, now Vie, and I wanted a strong, feminine name for our oldest, a name evocative of both mythic warrior women and sorceresses. We wanted a Celtic name, and “Morgan” does have origins in Ancient and Medieval regions of what’s now Wales, Ireland, and even Scotland. Morgan was born a Pisces, and being such a water spirit enhanced our love for the name’s interpretation as “bright sea dweller,” or “bright water nymph.”

Hannah, her second name, originated in the Middle East as a Semitic name and as such is popular among both Arabs and Hebrews of the Levant where it means, “favor” and “grace.” Curiously, too, versions of Hannah are found in old Celtic Gaelic naming, but the connection to the Levant is vague. For my then-wife Gwen and I, Morgan Hannah represented a blending of our historic cultural and religious origins and influences. Ethnically the two of us descended primarily from a mix of Pagan Celtic and Germanic peoples and were raised in a Western civilization based upon Judaeo-Christian monotheism. The Roman Empire tied it all together in unexpected ways. So we called little Morgan Hannah our “graceful water nymph.”

Dylan Blair, by the way, was what Gwen and I chose to name our firstborn had she been born a boy. Dylan shares similar origins and meanings as Morgan. Variations of Dylan mean, “born from the ocean,” “son of the sea,” or a gender-neutral name emphasizing “the great tides or flow of the sea.” Dylan also means “great flood,” “loyal” and “faithful,” and even “a warrior as fierce as a lion.” Blair’s an old Scottish Gaelic name rooted in the Celts, too. Blair originally meant a meadow or a field cleared of woods and is sometimes associated with battlefields. Thus they chose Dylan Blair for themselves later in life. Ironically, the house fire occurred on her 16th Birthday, nearly a year after her dental surgery. In my history-centric ADHD mind, every thing is connected, but not necessarily integrated. Different timelines compete for my conscious awareness in the same space-places and déjà vu overwhelms my brain with too much woo.

Morgan was 15 years old when she had all four wisdom teeth surgically extracted during the early summer of 2009. 

Her journey to having all four third molars surgically extracted was torturous but direct. Our wonderful family dentist, Dr. Fidler, informed us we needed to take her to an orthodontist for braces. Little Morgan’s teeth were all grown out early. As they continue to grow along with the rest of her body, they pushed her teeth together in a crowded, crooked way. So we drove Morgan across Lake Washington to Redmon on the Eastside for an appointment with Dr. Young, the recommended orthodontist. His clinic was a fantastic Disney mini-museum. He examined our daughter thru his assortment of lenses. Yup, our little girl needed braces. 

We were there for one of Morgan’s final appointments with Dr. Young when the big Nisqually Earthquake struck at 10:54 on the morning of Wednesday 28 February 2001. At first the media announced it was a 7.2 on the Richter scale as it was so fierce and long, but it was quickly downgraded to a still very strong 6.8. The quake lasted nearly a minute, but to us it felt like forever. We were on the second floor of the building in a room with large windows sitting around an enormous, heavy, oaken table shaped like an oval. All of us dove onto the floor and scurried under the table. The row of large, glass windows fluttered and, thankfully, held. The floors bucked and rippled as various objects fell from walls and shelves. Don’t recall hearing anyone shout or scream, but am sure they must have, right? Then, it was all over. Dr. Young made sure everyone in the clinic was accounted for and safe, told us to reschedule later, and then sent us home. This was 16 days before Morgan Hannah turned 7 years old.

Years went by, braces were removed, and regular, twice-a-year visits to the dentist continued. We didn’t see Dr. Young anymore. Didn’t need to, but we appreciated his skill, his compassion, his wealth of wisdom, and his expertise. The Disney museum aspect was a bit over the top for us, but lots of other families loved it. Found out later he hit hard times, closed his business in the Spring of 2017 at age 79, declared bankruptcy, left patients and vendors hanging, all which surprised those who knew him. He died soon afterwards on New Years’ Day 2019. What happened? I don’t know.

Eventually Dr. Fidler told us our little girl must, MUST have her four wisdom teeth removed. Otherwise they would crowd the other teeth, make cleaning them difficult, and undo all of the expensive and tedious orthodontal work. Gwen and my then-current wife Kristina both had to work and weren’t able to take off, so I took off work and drove our daughter instead. Did a lot of that during those years.

So we went off to Dr. Tidwell, the referred oral and maxillofacial surgeon. Later, during the surgery itself, on Thursday the 25th of June, my teenager was sedated with a degree of anesthesia. She came out of it, laughing and giggling, her 15 year old face already swollen and inflamed. The comical aspects surprised me, for I had worried and fretted about other issues, including the finances of it all post-insurance. 

Morgan “did great” during surgery, according to Dr. Tidwell. Oh, good! Then we had to wait an hour for observation. Make sure my teenager recovered from anesthesia well enough to go home and to make sure blood didn’t suddenly gush out all over the place or whatever this subculture of oral and maxillofacial healers like to keep an eye or two on. Then it was time to walk my daughter, dressed in classic Pacific Northwest-style grunge attire, back to the car, a blue Ford Taurus I’d inherited from my Mama back in Virginia.

My child turned in her seat and stared over at me with the most haunting eyes. She began to blurt out, “Borat! Mom!” over and over. 

“What?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Borat! Mom!”

“Excuse me? What would you like?”

“Borat! Mom!”

“What? What are you trying to tell me? I’m right here, sweetie. What do you want?”

“Borat! Mom!”

Those words I paraphrase from my memory, but her words are exact.

“OK,” I calmly said and began to drive away. “Let’s get on home so you can lay down and rest. You’ll see your Mom after she gets home from work. I gotta get back to work, too. OK?”

“Borat! Mom!”

To this day I have no idea what she meant if anything. Sometimes they claim not to recall much except it was all a blur, a hazy blur, and her face hurt. The back of her jaws hurt, and she had to rinse with warm salt water and gag and eat ice cream and not gag and then snoggle down soup. All that freezing cold ice cream and hot chicken noodle soup made her fart.

Morgan/Dylan was obsessed with the 2006 Borat movie. It was a cultural phenomenon among her peers that lasted for years. Dylan and peers were, for a time, almost as obsessed with Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat! Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan as they were with Harry Potter or Twilight. Dylan and their friends, inspired by Borat!, would make ridiculous and profane parodies of regular, everyday Seattle life for a long time. Dylan liked being up on nearly any stage, as it were.  

In July 2017 my middle daughter Kate had all four of her wisdom teeth cut out as well. After breaking two crowns on the upper and lower third molars on my right side, I had all four of mine surgically removed by Dr. Tidwell, too. I just can’t remember when, but the surgery was probably done before Kate’s. Then my youngest, Talia, had hers surgically extracted by a different doctor in March of 2022. Life goes on and on and these painful events become funny stories from the past. I still get names and pronouns and tenses and stuff mixed up. I used history as the divide. For example, after December 2001, I go by my first name, William. Before then I go by my middle name, Dudley, in the historical records. I decided not to put the archaic -e back on the end of my last name, Bass, as in the olden Germanic Basse. Among my ancestors are the tangled controversies of William Basse and Humfrey Basse and Mary Buschier of Italy and Nathaniel Basse from the 1500s and 1600s. Those Basses were French Huguenots, Normans, perhaps, who fled the Huguenot Wars, part of the French Wars of Religion, into the Holy Roman Empire, what’s now mostly Germany, and also into England and Scotland. French may be a Romance language, but the Franks arose from Germanic tribes who pushed out the Celts and the Romans. Ahhh, enough with names. Out with those cranky ol’ molars in the back!

Then again, Sacha Baron Cohen and his character Borat are masters of switching everything up and turning everything upside down to go forwards by going sideways and backwards. What’s in a name? In a label? We are a fluid species and identities are created by interactions between the mind and our biochemistry within altered environments. I wonder if our scientists were to figure out how to reverse aging and heal trauma by somehow causing stem cells to kick in to overdrive to heal! heal! heal! and grow new limbs and organs and whatever, would new third molars bud back up to suddenly re-erupt into the back of our mouths? What would that feel like? Is it too late to amend what we wish for in the quest for health, longevity, and vitality? Can there still be wisdom without any wisdom teeth?

“Borat! Mom!” forever! Made a Dad scratch his head, tho.

 

William Dudley Bass
Saturday 29 June 2024
Sunday 30 June 2024 
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
USA
Cascadia
Earth
Sol

 

Copyright © 2024 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.