Closed-lip smiles.

I was ten years old and it was a sunny Spring day. I had just left the dentist's office after a cleaning and was walking home to eat supper and get ready for my annual dance recital. I stopped at a crosswalk outside the dentist's office and waited for the traffic to allow me to cross. It was a busy four-lane street and when a car stopped for me in the closest lane, I stepped out into the crosswalk, not realizing that the car in the farthest lane was not slowing down. When the driver finally slammed on her brakes, it was too late. 


I don't remember the actual moment of impact, but I do remember turning toward the huge sedan as it screeched to a halt. The image in my mind of the car bearing down on me has always been in slow motion and black and white. Apparently the bumper hit me in the knee, my face smashed against the hood of the car and I was thrown backward about twenty feet, landing on the wide, low centre median. I'm pretty lucky that I landed on the median instead of the two lanes of oncoming traffic. The guesstimate by the cops was that the speed of the car had slowed to around around 30km/h when I was hit.


When I opened my eyes, there was a crowd of people standing over me and they were all strangers. It was hard to make out their faces since the bright sunshine had them backlit; they were all just silhouettes with loud voices. The ambulance arrived and I was taken to hospital where the nurse called my Mom to let her know I had been hit by a car. I can't imagine how scary that was for my Mom, even though they assured her I was alright.


There wasn't much to do but put a bandage on my knee and send me home. Everyone kept telling me how lucky I was that I wasn't more injured. Turns out I didn't even have a bump on my head because my two front teeth had taken the brunt of the impact. Those teeth were shattered; broken and jagged and only half their original length. I didn't actually see them until I got home and had I been older I would have cried my eyes out and vowed never to leave the house. As it was, I was determined to dance in my recital, so I pulled my tights and leotard over my big bandaged knee and we left for the theatre. 


My Mom made sure to tell my ballet teacher, Madame Hilliard, that I had been hit by a car but my mind was made up about going onstage. Madame Hilliard's reply was, "The show must go on, Dahling." Indeed. It wasn't until after the show had gone on that she realized that I could barely bend my leg and when she saw my teeth, she was speechless. I knew that she hadn't really heard what my Mom had said before the show, she was too busy fretting and getting things in order for curtain time. Madame Hilliard felt bad, but I insisted that I was fine.


I grew less and less fine as time went on. Those teeth became the source of so much self-consciousness over the course of my adolescence. My dentist applied bonding, or white filling material to the remains of my teeth to build them up to look like whole teeth again. I was fortunate that the roots had not been exposed, so they never caused me any pain, but the bonding was always just a temporary fix. The material would discolour around the edges and I would end up with what looked like brownish lines on my teeth. No amount of brushing would keep it from happening, so I would have to go to the dentist periodically to have all the bonding removed and replaced. The problem with that was every time new bonding was applied, my teeth would look different and be a slightly different shape than before. I'm sure I noticed it more than anyone else, but that didn't matter. It only mattered that I hated smiling and I felt like everyone was looking at my weird, brown-stained teeth.


I desperately wanted to have the teeth capped, but there was no way we could afford to have it done, since only essential dental procedures were covered by social assistance. I'm not sure why the driver of the car was never found to be at fault, which would have meant we could have received an insurance payment to help pay my dental bills, but that's all old news and water under the bridge. And to be honest, if I'd had them fixed back then, I never would have experienced the immense joy of finally having my teeth fixed as an adult.


I was around twenty-six when I paid to have porcelain veneers made and applied to my two front teeth and it was a life-changing event. I was in the throes of some pretty serious personal turmoil in my life at the time, but it didn't dampen the exhilaration I felt when I left my dentist's office and knew that for the first time since I was ten years old, I could smile at whomever I pleased and not feel the least bit hesitant or embarrassed. Absolutely one of the most liberating and unforgettable days of my life.

Around eight-years old, on a trip to Victoria with my Mom.