Mar 27, 2025
Just in case.
There are braces.
Because right when your twelve-year-old is done holding it together. Just when she has given up on acting like a civil human being. Just when she has realized that you cannot force her to use her words anymore.
That is the moment.
The moment when life and growth throw this ball of fun your way.
So now your picky eater who only ever ate sushi and omelets and avocado toast now only eats … absolutely nothing. Because you can’t chew with spacers between your teeth. So it is smoothies without any berries (because of the seeds, of course) and nothing but smoothies. All day. Every day.
Not that we were eating popcorn and ribs.
But let’s just make sure we don’t.
No ice. No gum. No biting down on toast.
And the food restrictions are not the worst of it.
Mainly what I want to whine about is grouchiness. The grouch-o-meter only goes up to ten on the grouch scale. It is about to set off every alarm.
A warning of impending doom.
This child is not only grouchy, but now she is in pain, too. Real, actual physical pain. The kind of pain most kids do not have to experience before adolescence. So they do not know how to handle it. It is not like the pain of a shot. Because it stays sore for days on end. It is not like scraping your knee when you fall off your bike. It is not the type of thing that mom can kiss and make better. It is just there. Raw, sore, pain day after day.
And the moment things start to settle down and your adolescent starts thinking maybe they could bite into that avocado toast after all…
Then it’s time for an adjustment.
And we begin this whole thing all over again.
It seems strange to think that by the time she gets her braces off, this child of mine will be sleeping at night again and using words to respond to us. It is like she will re-emerge as a human being who has remembered how to eat and sleep and speak.
At least that is the hope I am holding onto getting me through the next eighteen- to thirty-six months.
