ManicDDaily

Purple Teeth

I’m feeling very tired these days.

Some, as in, my husband, blame this fatigue on lack of sleep.  I say, no way José.  (That’s not quite what I say, but actually pretty close.) 

No, I blame a lot of it on my genetic heritage, those Norwegian women on my father’s side, to be specific.

There is something about Norwegian women and anemia.  So a doctor once told me.  In my possibly anemic brain fatigue, I can’t quite remember what he explained.  Perhaps the problem is that we evolved to gnaw on reindeer bones, and now don’t: I’m vegetarian and my female Norwegian forebears lived mainly on work combined with baked goods, black coffee, and the occasional round of pickled herring.  (Omegas!)

  “Work” (house work, farm work, community work) is perhaps not the best word for what energized them.  How about “will”? 

They each had rounded foreheads, and soft, but high-cheekboned, cheeks.  (Their faces seemed, a la Henry Louis Gates, to hold hints of migrations through central Asia, the Aleutian Islands, the Himalayas, maybe even Hungary.)  They had soft voices too.   (They believed in quiet, remember?)  But beneath all this softness, there were these extremely intense wills–a need to get their way.

That’s not really fair.  They weren’t selfish women;  they worked hard, and mainly for others.  As women of that generation, they were denied much that they didn’t even consider craving–power in the greater world was not just unaccessible, it was unthinkable. 

But in their home world, they maintained a very definite power.  This took the form of standards:  things you were supposed to do, and not do;  things like maintaining, at all times, order, cleanliness, a peaceful facade.   Things like baking hot dishes for the church, and the bereaved, and every day too, for the family, then washing those dishes immediately, drying them instantly with dishtowels (air took too long), and scurrying them back up in neat stacks on shelf-paper-lined shelves.   Washing, ironing and folding clothes, was done only on certain days and at certain times of day.  (To do laundry, for example, at 11 pm, even 9 pm on a Thursday night would be a sign of a breakdown of all that society held dear.  Wash was for Mondays, or at least a.m. hours.)  

But this will was not so good at the creation of red blood cells.   As my Norwegian grandmother, great aunt, greatgrandmother aged, they always seemed to turn to iron-rich vitamin liquids that turned their teeth a dull violet purple.  No matter how wilfully they tossed the little capfuls back—they would do it as if it were a shot of alcohol—the purple taint crept into their smiles.

 I find myself increasingly suffering from this rage for order.  Mine is not like theirs.  Their drawers, closets, were like large jigsaw puzzles, with everything fitted perfectly in its spot.   Mine are… well, let’s just put it this way.  I’m okay with chaos behind closed doors. 

 And did I mention that need for quiet?  Ahem.

But now (and this really is kind of scary), I found myself tired enough to toss back a tiny little capful of some dark brown, herby, iron-rich fluid, and no matter how I brush my teeth….