cutting teeth

Yesterday was miserable. I usually love Mondays; they are the best stay-at-home day of the week. The day that I get the most housework done, and somehow also spend the most purposeful time with my kids. The day I'm full of energy, feeling restored after the weekend, blessed after Sunday's mass, well-loved from hours of time with my husband.

But yesterday, Monday, was miserable. My son screamed all day, and it took me all day to figure out why. For a long time I thought it was his temper tantrums coming back, the temper tantrums that we'd carefully taken time to train him out of, and that he'd mostly dropped in response to our training. "No throwing fits," we'd say sternly, and then make him sit still on the corner of the loveseat until he was done fussing. In fact, one of the last times he threw one, I merely looked at him, and he toddled himself over to the loveseat, heaved himself up and then sat there looking at me, lower lip quivering.

But it wasn't temper, it was teeth. One tooth, actually. His first canine, that was not there in the morning, but was broken through the gum by the time dinner was over. By the end of the day it was clear that it wasn't pique, it was pain. I came close to crying myself as I watched him during dinner. When a bite of food touched the tender part of his gum, he'd squint his eyes closed and crinkle up his face, tears silently streaming down his cheeks. It reminded me of the helpless pain of a woman in labor. I just am going to be in pain; I can't do anything to stop it. Oh, I hurt, I hurt. And what he wanted was to be held. Everytime he squinted up his face in pain, he also reached out his arms to be held, and once in my arms, he clung like a limpet until it stopped hurting.

When we figured it out, of course, we gave him Tylenol. And it helped some, and sleep held more, and the tooth actually breaking through the gum helped most.

The old song says it best: "What cannot be cured, love/Must be endured, love." But how I hate it. How I hate this brokeness, this world that makes us learn that truth at the tender age of one, before it can be explained. Shakespeare claimed that no philosopher can endure a toothache patiently. But do you know who can? My Gamgee, at the end of a whole day of toothache. Silently and with tears streaming down his face. I am glad that I was there all day, to hold him.

Oh Lord Jesus, come back soon.