Appointment, sh-appointment

One of the advantages (or one of the most annoying parts) of moving is the way it forces you to deal with things that you've maybe been putting off for a while, for weeks, months, maybe years. You end up with appointment overload, not including your errands to the library and the dry cleaners or the late night runs to the grocery store to pick up more boxes from the produce lady with the curly hair and suspicious eyes. Also not including all the usual stuff you might try not to deal with, the conflicts, emotional issues, bad dreams, withdrawal.

To that end, I've had appointments with a dentist, eye doctor, regular doctor, lady doctor, etc., etc., all in the last week or two. My experience at the dentist was particularly important. However, this has nothing to do with the state of my teeth. I'll have you know, he thinks I have great teeth. Plus, I don't have any cavities. No, instead, for the first time in my life, my dentist was younger than me. For some reason, this feels like a very important milestone that needs discussing.

I don't know about you, but I'm used to dentists being, um, old. Perhaps a tiny bit crusty. Which is not to say anything negative about dentists--I have no idea why, in my mind, dentists are supposed to be older, even elderly. I don't think of police officers or lawyers or even opticians as old when I picture the profession. It must be that as a tween, I had a dentist who looked like Hal Holbrook. Or maybe when you are a tween, everyone over twenty looks a hundred.

Either way, my new dentist is so young.

I feel awkward saying this since I myself look crazy young (someday I'll tell you about how last year a flight attendant asked me if I was an unaccompanied minor--this means she thought I was younger than fifteen. I have since avoided wearing my glasses). I sometimes worry about looking old enough to be taken seriously by my students. No, I think what shocked me was not actually that there are unwrinkled dentists, but that I'm, gasp, older than I was before. People my age, people younger than me, are grown up, out doing stuff in the world like dentistry.

I think I missed it happening, though I'm not sure I mind it at all. It just seems like a big deal no one told me about. I feel like we should have parties for people when this happens to celebrate. Hurray, I'm old! Hurray, I'm old enough have to figure it out on my own and old enough to be scared and old enough to make it happen or not.

At play here in my delayed reaction is that part of being a graduate student means you get to (have to) keep becoming, keep becoming who you are/who you will be, without the distraction of regular hours or much of a paycheck to provide much stasis. I've heard those of us who still study described as "perpetual teenagers," thwarted and stunted and unable to grow all the way up. This is probably sometimes true for all of us.

Still, there is something about deliberately keeping your identity in flux, deliberately slurping up all the knowledge and dialogue available, of being that conscious of the learning, learning and the constant reach, reach. This continuing to become has its issues and its problems, but I like it not because it delays aging or I'm afraid of turning thirty or forty or have any desire whatsoever to be nineteen again, but because it satisfies. Much like a good teeth cleaning. Or moving on when it's time.

PS. Two more boxes packed. All Husband's doing.