Topic 201: Behind the Teeth

Carol:

Mouthing Off

Sometimes don’t you just feel like putting your hands over your ears and screaming? The kind of “behind the teeth” primal howl of emotion that implodes if you don’t open your mouth and let it out?  I start to feel it when my daughter gets “that tone” in her voice as she asks “Are you finished with the essay yet?”
 

Yesterday, we decided to forego the essay. Megan suggested it, and I didn’t argue because every other Monday I get really stressed out.  That’s when I experience the convergence of writing the daily theme, picking up the house for the arrival of the cleaning crew and getting ready for my volunteer “job.” Stress makes me get “that tone” in my voice, too, and I feel like putting my hands over my ears and screaming. I must have a really tough life, eh, if I let such minutia make me feel crazy. 
 

Not that I have never experienced real scream-worthy stress. I was teaching one January when both my pre-school kids got chicken pox. I would get up at 5 a.m. to grade papers and prep for the class, drive in through the slush of a winter storm to teach, then head back home to start soaking them in oatmeal baths to alleviate the itching. I worried a lot about what new illness would create day-care havoc. 
 

My major stress relief back then, besides hiring a cleaning lady, was being with the students. Most of them were women, most mothers. They knew exactly what I was going through and commiserated with the right amount of sympathy and humor. In fact, I felt more relaxed at work than at home.
 
Right about that same time my husband was experiencing his own scream-worthy stress. He hated his job, didn’t much care for the people he worked with, and was frustrated with demanding, angry clients. His body reacted with debilitating migraine headaches, so It became obvious that some kind of change needed to happen. That was the spring we decided to take a year off and travel the country in a motorhome.
 

For the most part, that odyssey  provided just the respite from the screaming, howling stress that we both needed. We threw away all our work-centered routines, got up with the sun and went to bed with the moon. And, over an 18,000 mile journey, we only had two loud, emotional melt-downs, both times when we were hungry, tired and cranky.  And we returned to Prescott with plenty of memories to sustain us when the stress started to roll over us again.
 

I don’t know all that much about the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, but I saw his painting “The Scream”(1893) when I was studying in Europe.  It was part of a larger Munch exhibition but I only remember “The Scream.” I was mesmerized by the anguish of the figure, shown through primitive, broad strokes. Apparently, Munch himself understood that “behind the teeth” raw emotion of suffering. He wrote to a friend, “You know my picture, ‘The Scream?’ I was stretched to the limit—nature was screaming in my blood…After that I gave up hope of ever being in love again” (source: “Edvard Munch”).
 

Okay, so I was exaggerating a bit. I do feel stretched to the limit sometimes, even without juggling work and family, but I have never experienced that deep angst of Munch’s painting, thankfully never experienced such loss of hope or love.
 

Any minute now, Megan is going to call up to me with The Question. “are you finished yet?” I don’t have to put my hands over my ears and scream because…. I’m finished.
 

Source:
“Edvard Munch.” Wikipedia.

Megan:

We didn’t write yesterday for a few different reasons, but if I’d been able to think of something to say about his topic, we probably wouldn’t have taken the day off. Today we don’t have any early morning obligations, so I can’t weasel my way out of it again. Even Googling the topic didn’t help, but I did learn that there are behind-the-teeth braces available now. That’s cool. But I’ve never had braces so I can’t talk about how nice it would have been to have the new ones, instead of the other, front-of-teeth kind. Instead, I’m going to talk about the dogs. Again.

Last Friday, Milo got into a fight with a friend’s neighbor’s dog. Every Friday we have coffee at this neighbor’s house, and we let the dogs off leash to roam her giant fenced in yard. Usually Milo ignores the neighbor’s dogs, but for some reason – and I think Bella was the reason – they went for each other at the fence. I heard the noise and ran with my father to break them up. The other dog had squeezed its head through the fence and clamped onto Milo’s jaw. My father had to kick the dog several times before he let go of Milo’s face.

There was a fair amount of blood, from both animals, because before the dog got Milo, Milo got the dog. I didn’t see how it started, but since Milo is the least aggressive dog ever, I think he must have been protecting Bella – who’d spent the whole fight leaping straight into the air and howling. After the bleeding stopped, Milo was fine, but my mother and I agreed that we should not take the dogs back to our friend’s house.

So, we decided to try the dog park. I’d taken Bella the week before, but we hadn’t tried it with both dogs. Milo immediately joined a pack of males, each determined to mark every plant, chair and garbage can, while Bella followed along. I wasn’t sure how our two dogs would interact with each other with so many other distractions around. At home they are pretty attached (correction, Bella is attached to Milo), but I just figured it was because there were no other options. But the only time she left his side was if he sneaked off without telling her. When she noticed he was missing, she’d run over to me and wait for Milo to come back into view.

After awhile, we were joined by two pit bulls – one was a little puppy, much smaller than Bella, and the other was huge and terrifying but very sweet.  He took a liking to Bella, and Milo took a liking to the pit puppy. Neither of the younger dogs appreciated the attention. Bella hid under my chair and the other puppy crawled into my lap, Milo still salivating by her rear end. And then I noticed he was dripping blood all over the puppy’s back. He’d somehow opened the wound he’d received the day before. 

I’m not that familiar with dog parks, but it is my understanding that there is an etiquette. Don’t bring aggressive dogs, or dogs in heat, or unvaccinated animals. One dog bleeding all over another also seemed like bad manners, so we apologized and left. But as soon as I’m sure he’s healed up, we’ll go back again.