Milk Teeth, Phantom Limbs, and Carpentry Staples

Written on April 16, 2018.

MEMORY OBJECT (FAYETTEVILLE): “My memory object is my baby teeth, which my mother collected and saved and one day mailed to me sealed in a bright blue envelope.”

When we discussed the memory objects from Fayetteville in a Civic Imagination meeting, I was immediately struck by the milk teeth. Most of the other objects from this location were saturated with a kind of sentimentality linked to Protestant ideology, fitting for a workshop run in a Lutheran church. This object, however, was different. In contrast to the descriptions of the other Fayetteville memory objects, which were frequently longer and suffused with affect, this description was short and matter of fact, yet the language was remarkably evocative, almost poetic. It could even be organized as a short poem:

My memory object is my baby teeth,

which my mother collected and saved

and one day mailed to me

sealed in a bright blue envelope.

Especially vivid is the image of the baby teeth in the bright blue envelope.

Further reflecting on this memory object, it seems to me that another reason it intrigues me so is not because of what is present but what is absent. The brief, vivid description evokes my curiosity and sparks my imagination. What is the relationship between the speaker and his (I was told the speaker was a man) mother? The fact that she collected them at all suggests that they had some significance to her, and they mean something to the writer as well, although it is not clear what. Why did she decide to send them to him all of a sudden? Did she let him know that she was sending them, or did they arrive in the blue envelope unannounced? Did the envelope contain a letter of any kind explaining the reason for sending the teeth, and what did the speaker make of the unusual parcel? The object suggests a narrative, but it is up to the reader to decide what that story might be. In this sense, the teeth are what Roland Barthes refers to as a readerly rather than a writerly text. The reader must actively work to interpret the text, filling in the gaps intentionally left by the writer in order to make sense of the work.

My notion that the milk teeth are a readerly memory object was supported by the widely diverging reactions of the Civic Paths members. Others thought that this object was creepy or even disgusting. There is, in fact, something abject about the object. I think it stems from the fact that the object was once a part of the body of the speaker. What, then, does it mean to feel nostalgia for something that was once part of your body? Perhaps it is like when an amputee continues to feel sensation in their phantom limb.

I recall a carpentry staple that I swallowed as a baby and was removed from my digestive tract. My mother, who I do not have a particularly close relationship with, keeps this staple swathed in cotton gauze in a plastic container in her jewelry box. Perhaps one day, sensing her own mortality, she will send this staple to me in the mail in a colorful envelope.