Grateful for Teeth

I have been attending an Adult Rehabilitation Center for a little over two months. In developing relationships with and caring for these people, i have been thankful for things i had previously overlooked. For instance: friends, protective brothers and loving sisters in Christ, the ability to decipher fantasy from reality, clean clothes; and today, teeth. Today i am thankful for teeth.

More than a few people at the center do not have all their teeth, if any. One woman i absolutely adore (we'll call her Sebastiana) is small, very strong, senile, and has absolutely no teeth. Today she had a vice grip on me, wanting to take me with her to San Sebastian; i told her (in my broken Spanish), "After lunch."

So we sat to eat - her arm tightly linking mine. Sebastiana is given different food than everyone else because she can't chew and could choke. I looked over to see a bowl full of creamy beige stuff with spots of black stuff. The kitchen aide said it was, "porridge", but it didn't look like anything i had seen before. It could have resembled one of John Cusack's mother's concoctions on Better Off Dead.

At first Sebastiana ate very quickly, then stopped abruptly. One of the nurses came to assist Sebastiana in finishing her meal but the feisty old woman didn't want to finish and began wiping her tongue with a napkin. Again, my Spanish isn't all that great so all i really understood her say was, "No more... icky..."

I looked over at my roasted, boneless chicken breast, white rice and green salad. I had given thanks for the provision of food but forgot to thank God for teeth to eat it.

Praise God for all 32 of my crooked, silver filled, imperfect teeth. They are beautiful!
Now i'm off to brush and floss.

Until next time, some Sebastiana-isms (as translated from Spanish):

"Fabio. I left him because he had no teeth."
"Ay, yi, yi!"
"A boy was selling huge tortillas at church."
"Bingo, bingo, bingo!"
"Let's go to San Sebastian."
"Bésame, bésame mucho!"