Carlos Fentanes

Conversations with Virgin Mary

For seven days, I have been silent, something inside is taking my speech power from me. It’s not that I can’t talk, but each time I open my mouth an invisible creature inside my right back molar is punishing me.

There’s a solution for this, a place just a few steps from my office called The Dentist.

Last year my dentist put a porcelain crown, and now there’s a revolution asking to take down the crown, it’s time to execute the extermination order and reestablish peace around my crown.

I have always suffered from Dentistophobia, a strange illness of irrational fear to dentists and their bill.

Even when I’m the one who holds the crown, my wife has the last word, I must obey. I need to go.

So, I get courage and went to the doctor, they checked me, and they gave me the verdict. I needed endodontics, a root canal, and a two-thousand-dollar bill.

My fears were confirmed.

Four hours of revolted fight, hammering, drilling, and beating, leave me tired, with my mouth numb and not willing to eat anything, maybe soup, something unchewable.

Then it came the torture chamber, my wife had prepared burgers, I cannot even open my mouth wide enough to take a bite of it. I needed to rest, so I headed to Jorge’s, he’s always good on medicinal infusions for this suffering case. 

Virgo is at the door as if she was waiting for me, she meowed and the door opened immediately, it was Jorge.
“Virgin Mary told me that you will come, that you are having problems with your molar. Come on in, I have something for you.”

Instead of a traditional infusion, Jorge opened a bottle of Louis XIII, “Take it as rubbing alcohol for your battle wounds, nobody wants to go to war but sometimes it’s necessary.” He said, half joking.

Then Jorge poured it in two glasses and started to talk, “You were avoiding this because you think it was dangerous, it will leave you in pain, but you didn’t realize that you were already in pain.” He put one of the glasses in front of me.

I didn’t know how to react, I was expecting some kind of grandma’s remedy not this expensive drink, it was as if Jorge was in the war room surrounded by grown up people discussing serious matters, so I started to talk. “When I was a kid, I was more adventurous, and that took me to problems with my parents. When I was in grade seven, I took a day trip with my school to the forest, my dad didn’t want me to go, and I disobeyed him. I went anyway. The trip wasn’t the problem, the school rented an old bus, and the brakes failed and the bus overturned. I ended up with a skull fracture in the left temporal bone.”

Jorge, smiled first, then started to laugh out loud, “And you’re blaming yourself since then for disobeying your father, right? You’re avoiding any kind of “Danger”, even going to the dentist. This is the most elaborate case of self-protection I’ve ever seen.”

I stayed serious, that wasn’t funny for me, I didn’t know why he was laughing, is he laughing at me? Is it laughing at the situation? I tried to respond, to defend my posture. “Well, this almost killed me.”

Jorge just shakes head in signal of disapproval. “What didn’t kill you makes you stronger. Sometimes we as parents overprotect our children, we need them to fail and make mistakes, it’s part of life. Are you going to stop doing things just because you’re going to get hurt? Even on your bed you’re going to get hurt.” He looked at the bottle in front of us, then he started to put it back in its case. He then looked at me in disbelief and shook his head again. He stopped for a moment and then took his bottle and stored it in the shelf. “I’m going to find something in the folder of Virgin Mary’s letters.”  And started to sort out the letters in his folder, “I have a letter from Virgin Mary about this”.

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Monday, July 16^th

Wind is capricious, you cannot harness the wind, cannot control its effects: clouds, rain, waves.

No wind means no waves; no waves mean no surfing.

Parents were happy, it’s not safe to be at the beach all day, no waves mean they must return home earlier. But no, that was not the kids’ plan. “If the waves won’t come to us, we’ll make our own waves”. That was not a statement, it was a war cry, a rebellion.

They attached wheels to their boards. In their refusal to remain still, the skateboard born and a new danger but also a new challenge.

Maybe all inventions shared a similar story, small acts of disobedience against something that will not cooperate.

Let your kid skateboarding. Don’t judge if it’s dangerous, yes it is, but that’s not the point. Children jump ramps, fall, experiment, and sometimes get hurt. The skills that your kid learn when he’s on the skateboard with his friends is something you cannot learn from a book or the internet: balance, courage, coordination, failure, recovery, and confidence.

Let yourself fail. Go and do things and get hurt and wear your wounds as medals, it’s the sign that you have tried.

The world is dangerous. The child will discover this eventually, whether on a skateboard, in a classroom or inside a marriage.

Children need challenges not protection, a child on a skateboard is negotiating with gravity. Every movement is a question. Every fall is an answer.

There are things you cannot learn in a book.

We spend our lives trying to remove obstacles from the path of those we love, unaware that the obstacles are the path itself.  

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I finished reading the letter and I didn’t know where to hide, I then re read the letter again trying to avoid any further conversation with Jorge.

Then he started to talk. “The unavoidable act of facing your fears. That’s right, sooner or later they’ll reach you”. He started to laugh louder.

I still didn’t know how to react, so I told him a story. “Marie Curie died of her own exposure to radiation, if she would be a little more cautious, she would outlive another 30 years, she would do a lot more for the science.”

And he answered immediately, “If she would be more cautious, she would stay at home taking care of her kids, that’s what it was expected for a woman in the early 20^th century, and we will still be figuring out what radiation is. Go outside and get hurt, that’s what I would expect from you”.

He paused.

“Every discovery has its price.”

He took a sip from his glass. For a moment, his expression changed, as if the argument had opened a door that he had not intended to enter.

“Radiation,” he continued, “the same thing that can destroy the body can also save it. Millions of people have been treated because someone was willing to enter that unknown territory.”

He looked at me.

“I have sat in a room with an oncologist. I have listened to the explanation: the risks, the possibilities, the numbers. A doctor can explain the danger to you, your risks, but cannot walk the road for you.”

He remained silent for a few seconds.

“In the end, you are the one who has to enter the room. You are the one who has to accept the uncertainty. You are the one who has to choose.”