On Monday, I got braces again. Thank God for Invasalign, or in my case a budget brand called ClearCorrect. I don’t think my fragile, vain ego could have handled the metal brackets. 

It has been about 10 years since I last took the braces off. This probably does not sound significant to most people, but it is to me because I was born with a cleft lip and palate and so I’ve had a metric fuckton of orthodontic hardware in my mouth. Ten years ago was not the conclusion of the work: actually it was my breaking point. At that time I decided that I could no longer face (lol) another year of braces. That is what it would have required in order to prepare my mouth for the dental implants I needed (and still need, as I am still missing those two teeth). However, as a 20-yearold guy — who’d already had braces for going on a decade; who wanted, among other things, to be attractive to women — I thought I’d rather be toothless (this felt at least wryly charming to me) than have braces for another year. This was probably the right call at the time, as everything is right in its own time.

Now these ten years have passed, my teeth have shifted a touch from the perfect arrangement in which my orthodontist placed them… but more importantly, now I want those teeth, I want to fill the two gaps where I’ve never grown natural teeth. (There wasn’t any bone for them to grow on where my face was cleft. There is still some uncertainty over whether I will need another bone graft, a shard taken from my superfluous hip bone, ground, and packed into my gums — though my present doctors think we may be able to avoid this extra hardship.) I want the new teeth because my vanity has taken a new form: no longer do I want charming gaps over metal brackets, now I want the full gleaming rich man’s smile. I think it’s Zoom that’s done it to me: having had to stare at myself day in, day out, for what, three years now? I’ve started to notice how ugly my teeth are.

So on Monday I finally got “ClearCorrect.” Ten years since, against my wonderful orthodontist Dr. Robin Jackson’s wishes and exhortations, I discontinued my lifelong battle against my broken biology, I took up the unending task again — this time at my own expense, since the Canadian cleft lip and palate program only pays for work done in your youth.

And just that evening, when I got home from the appointment, where they fitted my seethrough trays that I’ll wear for the next six to twelve months, my mother texted me this: 

Robert Jackson | Obituary | Vancouver Sun and Province

That very night! What the fuck, universe? Just when I had finally restarted the work that he had labored so long to achieve! Indeed, he worked for 20 years on my mouth, and I gave him not the satisfaction of completing the job, but the insult of storming out of his office, leaving holes in my face, unwilling to brook one year more of pain to finish the job of 20 years. That’s youth: impatience, impertinence. And here I had just learned my lesson… and you had gone.

Dr. Jackson was always intensely kind to and patient with me. His specialty was treating clefties. He began working with me even as an infant — my mother said that, when I was anxious, he would rub my gums, and this would cause baby-me to relax. I love this image, even though I cannot remember it.

I thought for a long time that Jackson had sufficiently inspired me as to make my own career choice orthodontist. I turned out to not score, you know, very well in science classes, so, yeah not an orthodontist… yet.

I remember there was a period of time where I had to have my expander — a contraption that widens your jaw — cranked on a weekly basis. Dr. Jackson’s house was closer to my mother’s apartment than his office, so instead of making my mother and I drive out there, he invited us to visit him at his home so he could do the work! His beautiful apartment in on the Kerrisdale hill in Vancouver. I lay on the couch in his spacious living room while he operated the little lever that broke and stretched via microscopic fissures my growing jaw. He didn’t charge extra for intimate reception. 

Well, Dr. Jackson, this blog post is paltry praise for your herculean efforts. But what I can do honorably is finish the work you started, and in a year or two, show the teeth you hoped so long to properly arrange.

Rest in peace. Smiling up at you,

Torben

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Poem about cleft lips 👄 - by Torben Robertson