The Basket Lady

In the Good Humor Town, Tinpanic will be performing at the Rumford Falls Auditorium on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and the doors open at 6:30 p.m. Please come out to support the Rumford Performing Arts and to be entertained by the unique sounds of Tinpanic Steele drums.

We’ll have seat cushions available for the comfort of the first floor audience and it’s first come-first served. Wink, wink.

Basket Lady chose to ignore the nagging pain of a lower jaw molar and instead, laid on the couch in a fetal position and held a pillow next to my jaw. It wasn’t long before denial took over and believe me, de-nial is not a river in Egypt.

My next move was to put some Anbesol on the tooth for a couple of days and figured that would take care of the pain. It helps teething babies, I thought.

By the end of the week, I was crying like a baby when the swelling around the gum line felt like my jawbone was about to explode every time I tried to chew on the right side of my mouth. I finally gave in and called the dentist.

Turns out, Dr. Sewall explains to me with both of his hands, a retractor, a suction hose and a partridge in a pair tree in my mouth, that the tooth didn’t have any of its pulp left and the roots were decayed from lack of a blood supply (probably didn’t get enough sunshine, either), and he needed to do a root canal.

“Ah, come on!” I was trying to say with all of that equipment in my mouth, “Do you really need to do a root canal?” Dr. Sewall replied with a snicker, “Speak up, I can’t understand you.”

Folks, I’m not fond of needles or going to the dentist for that matter but for the life of me, I don’t get the connection between roots and canals. A canal to me is an inland waterway and roots are what hold a tree in the ground.

Anyway, Dr. Sewall did phase one of the root canal and relieved me of my tooth pain but not the pain of the bill!

During one achy tooth day, I was still in my pajamas feeling “blue” when Sally Yarnish appeared out of the blue and brought three gift bags for the Basket Lady projects. Sally commented on how warm and beautiful the day was and that it was the perfect day to be outdoors taking a walk in the sunshine.

After she left, I felt uplifted by her words and donations so I got dressed and took a walk down to the nature trail behind the Chet Bulger football field. Friends, just a kind word or deed can make all the difference in the world to someone in pain.

A quote from Mother Teresa: Truly words to live by.

“We must know that we have been created for greater things, not just to be a number in the world, not just to go for diplomas and degrees, this work and that work. We have been created in order to love and to be loved.”

Give someone a basket today. Kindness not only counts but it adds up!

We miss you every day, Dot Sanchas! Until then, smile and live in the present.