MEDIUM RARE 

Of all the people in the world, who should remind me that it’s been years since we’ve known each other – you know, like an anniversary – but my dentist?   

“Don’t you remember, when my first clinic was at the clubhouse?” he asked, referring to the subdivision where my mother lived with my kid sister. Since December 2004, and due to the proximity between his clinic and my sister’s home, Dr. Bobby Gison has been my dentist. It is my belief that one dentist per patient is more than enough, at least in one lifetime.

So we exchanged “Merry Christmas” greetings and “Happy 19^th anniversary” on my last visit a few days ago. The doctor’s hands continue to be gentle and, as I described them to their owner, “You work like a jeweler,” treating each tooth like a diamond (the hardest substance) or a pearl (as teeth are often compared with). It was a crazy way of acknowledging the Christmas spirit, this meeting between dentist and patient.

The doctor won’t be back at his clinic – a container van converted into an office -- until the 27^th, tomorrow, when all honest working people return to work after the holidays. It won’t be long now before his son graduates from college to follow in his father’s footsteps. Another container van coming up!

Being the last month of the year, December has its own peculiar way of bringing back memories, whether these are dated December or not. Can you imagine Christmas happening in, say March or June, when the climate is designed for heat and sun alternating with rain and floods? Christmas in the middle of the year? Anticlimactic! Where would the drama go?

December remembers the highs and lows of the year about to pass, but nothing beats the memory-lane walk better than recalling childhood experiences, the friendships forged among classmates, the ties that bound and continue to bind family and generations. As Barbra Streisand puts it, scattered pictures of a life that was oh, so simple then, or has time rewritten every line? Something about recalling the past leads to uncomplicating history.

December remembers the great and dear friends we have lost, without whom the colors of our youthful Christmases would have been less than merry and bright.