Good Riddance: Palate Expanders
A special edition of our weekly series
Happy Good Riddance Day to all who celebrate! (That’s you!) Once again, I have a longer let go to share, so I decided to write it in the form of a post instead of our usual Saturday meeting place, the chat. But as always, I want to hear what you’re letting go of too, so please let me know in the comments!
This week was one of the hardest ones I’ve had in a long time, as my daughter’s new palate expander forced me to come face to face with my own weakness as a mother. If you know what a palate expander is, I am hugging you right now with everything I have. If you don’t know: Welcome to hell. It’s an orthodontic appliance, but the metal, retainer-like thing looks more like a torture device from the Dark Ages. Its purpose is to reduce the potential of more complex dental issues later on by widening the upper jaw using pressure that is applied to the upper palate and jawbones.
And how is this pressure applied, you so innocently ask? You are given something called a key—a precious little plastic instrument that looks more like a magic wand belonging to Chucky than a key. Every day you must place it in a tiny hole in the middle of the expander in the roof of your child’s mouth and turn it, manually expanding the device—and your child’s bones. As you might imagine, it’s enough to cause some serious pain and discomfort as the bones are literally pushed apart each day. So fun!
The first few days of this week, I fully dissociated as I turned the key then listened to my daughter Marlow cry out, “You want me to DIE, don’t you?!” I thought to myself, No parent should ever have to do this. Not one. Being a parent already feels like you’re just one giant exposed nerve, feeling everything your child feels and wanting to fix every ounce of the hardest parts. To see her in pain like this was more than I could bare. Coward, I told myself. You coward. My husband usually handles these types of “toughen up” moments, and he’s much better at it than I am. But he’s still away on tour, and truthfully, I am so exhausted in so many ways and for so many reasons that the palate expander felt like a direct reflection of my ability as a parent. We all do so much for our kids, have done so much, and will continue to do so much throughout their entire lives, but the one thing I do NOT want to be involved in or in charge of is causing my daughter any type of pain, even if I know it’s in her own best interest.
Each night after I turned the key in my daughter’s expander and held her helplessly as she cried herself to sleep, I would walk to my bedroom and collapse on the bed, my legs weak and eyes wide open with some holy terror. At night, I woke from nightmares of Marlow’s head popping like a little wind-up toy about to break. Pop goes the Marlow! I barely slept for three nights. After a few days, Stacy, our long-time childcare savior extraordinaire, gently offered to take over after watching me struggle. She was much more capable of turning the key. And, likely because of the ease Stacy modeled during the process, Marlow was able to be braver with her, and now her pain has started to subside. We made it. But I still feel like a failure. How could I not be able to do this for her? How could I be so…weak? What would I do in a REAL crisis involving Marlow, should one ever arise? Just hope someone else was available to deal with it while I stuck my head in the sand? COWARD.
After beating myself up over it (and crying a few times) I accepted that this was just not something I could do without heavy emotion and judgement toward myself, and that also maybe that was a good thing to recognize—that the incredible closeness my daughter and I share might make this particular task harder for both of us. My anger and shame for what I perceived as my failure slowly turned into gratitude that someone else who loves Marlow (but who did not have her literally cut out of their body) offered to step in and be strong where I could not. (Sorry if that was graphic, but it’s true!) I know this is something that a lot of kids and their parents have to go through—braces, palate expanders, broken bones, etc. It’s normal. It is not a crisis. Marlow is not in danger.
So this week I’m letting go of my weakness, my perceived cowardice, my inability to cause my child temporary pain for her greater good. I can do almost anything else for her and I have: pick pizza cheese out from the crevices of the expander’s metal clasps, give her jaw and head a massage, cup my hands together to catch whatever partially eaten food item she is hacking up after it got caught under her expander. But I can’t turn the key. Can’t do it. Nope. Not happening.
In closing: Bless you, Stacy!
What are you working to let go of (or, hack up, if you will) this week? Let me know in the comments!
REMINDER: Mark your calendars, The Short and Sweet, our live gathering over Zoom for paid subscribers is taking place next Saturday, December 14th at 4pm ET with some much-needed end-of-the-year wisdom, care of my amazing mom, Bonnie Tamblyn. As always, you are welcome to have your camera and microphone on or off and participate as much or as little in the conversation as you'd like to. The Zoom link will be sent to paid subscribers about thirty minutes before the start of the Zoom.
Oh, been there! Sending hugs and lots of reassurances that you're doing the right thing. My son is 22 and I still shudder at those memories. He was 8 when he had his palate expander. I remember calling my mom after the very first vaccine appointment I took my son to and telling her how hard it had been. She said, "That's the first in a very long line of things you'll wish they could just do to you, not him." And I think of that so much. Every injury, surgery, heartbreak, I always think, "Let me have it. Why can't I just do this for them." But of course we can't. We just have to prepare them as best we can, and stand beside them when they'll let us. This week I'm back to posting here after a month away. A rough year personally plus the election hit me hard and I took the whole month of November off from Poetical. But I'm rested and letting go of doubts about my poetry and my ability to sustain a weekly post. Time to dive back in and see what happens.
I had a palate expander as a kid and this post brought back all those feelings! I had it at 8 yrs old and I’m 43 now and I can still feel the metal and plastic if I’m reminded…but honestly I’ve never thought about it from my mother’s POV! She was young at the time, and it must have been so stressful for her. But in my memory it was kind of a “we’re in this together” type of thing. I remember vaguely that she hated it so much too and it really gave her the heebie jeebies but I was focused on my own discomfort. Still, I never thought of just how much it had to be hard on her, because at the time of all that pain for me my mom was also my biggest comfort (I had braces for FOUR YEARS after; she was my rock through all the pain and stress). I’m having so much newfound respect for my mom who was so willing to jump in and do the hard things, though she and my dad had a deal that she would handle most ailments and sicknesses and broken bones but if there was blood and/or guts, my dad would have to handle it. I always thought that was funny. And in the end, she dealt with quite a lot of blood and guts from me and my brother. Anyway, I’m not a mom, but big shoutout to all the moms who do the bravest things every day. Even if the bravery is knowing what you cannot do.