Every person is unique.

In my hands are the inverse replicas of some hopeful soul’s snaggled teeth. The orthodontist had filled his mouth with alginate; a flood of faintly minty gunk rising against the pillars of his jaws and slipping gently into every crevasse, setting within a minute or two into a rubbery mold. This result was then wrapped in the wet napkin which –hours later– I now unfurled. The molds for the upper and lower impressions were cold, lifeless and oddly human in their pink and pliant intricacy. I sometimes thought my job was not unlike a coroner’s. These negative images came from corners which the patient himself seldom ever saw –at least not in this way, with open, thorough and clinical clarity.

The journey through life is filled with longing and loneliness.

The dust of plaster of Paris is dry; it desiccates the very hairs in my nose. It can’t be good for me to breath it in, and so I turn my head to the side, but I wear no mask. I dump the powder into a rubber jar pre-filled with the proper quantity of water, and begin to cut my way through it with a table knife. Once the mix has turned to snowy mud, I turn the dial on the vibrating pedestal on the counter. The gypsum’s gritty visage softens, pummeled by a million quick and minuscule attacks. Bubbles rise up through the milky sludge, looking briefly like grey-white eyeballs of frogs before they open up and simmer from shallow cavity into finely rippled plain. This part mesmerizes me, but I mustn’t linger. When plaster is wet the clock is ticking.

What purpose does this loneliness and desire serve?

The trapezoidal base is filled up to three quarters of an inch. And the the butter knife is out again, spooning hemi-hydrated calcium sulfate into the trench where teeth had formerly burrowed in, piling it on like bleached peanut butter on a stalk of celery. I set the mess upon the vibrator for just a moment to let the liquid limestone seep in every crevasse in the wall where once the seeping had gone the other way. Here was a war in Alcace-Lorrain between alginate and plaster for the pomp and glory of a perfect maxillofacial empire. Now the mold, plaster and all is flipped over plaster-side-down onto the base, I check the edges and then set it aside. In less than a minute the stalactite sisters from the upper teeth are set nearby to their sturdy stalagmite brothers. As they gradually harden they grow warm to the touch.

It can only mean we are meant to be driven on toward something; some change must come about.

Twenty minutes later these statues molt their whitening pink husks. I quickly peel and scrape the drying alginate out of the u-shaped perforated metal trays which held them and set the trays aside to soak. Now I survey the cooling damp greenstone product; starkly white as Dover with a soft eggshell surface which casts back no reflection from even the strongest glare. Betimes they need touching up. The impressions of bits of food are sometimes fossilized at the gumlines. With a tartar hook I scrape away the last bit of lunch re-imagined as chalk.

Some change feels like death.

The grinder is my favorite part. For objects of the grinding, it must be hell. Each horseshoe of starchy gums and teeth sit on an impracticably oversize chunk of plaster. When the teeth are fitted together these pedestals overshadow the teeth themselves, preventing study. In some cases the molars’ angle is such that the pedestals prevent them from meeting the way they do in the patient’s mouth. I take them to the grinder, a rough spinning, water-saturated splashy wheel which can devour hardened plaster like a dog eating raw hamburger. But I know every cut by heart. I move quickly yet carefully, gently pressing against the lower teeth to plane down its pedestal parallel to the bite line. Reinserting the wax bite impression (a billowy pillow of hardened wax the color and texture of red satin outlined with the patient’s teeth marks), I plane the upper model parallel to the lower. And then I guide the pair in together, clenched around the red wax against the wet roaring of the wheel, shaving each angle around the gums to specific distances.

It is immediately obvious what change takes from us, and generally less obvious that it gives us anything at all.

An hour or two later, the teeth are pulled from the drying oven. Now they are brittle white and lighter than before. When the upper and lower teeth brush together they rasp and set my own teeth on edge. I carefully sand down a few rough spots on the base, and blow away the dust. Now I turn to the Rubbermaid vat of polishing soap and remove the lid. The soap is thick and yellowy clear; it oozes up around my fingers as I lower the models in.

The process is so interminable it is seldom distinguishable as a process.

After an hour in the soap, the plaster of Paris has begun to spread an aura in the surfactant surrounding each piece. I carefull grip each slippery one as I pull it out; I am loth to chip what I have worked this carefully to build. Upper and lower is laid separately on paper towels to drain. There they stay for two to three hours.

And when the reward finally comes, will it be of any use?

Finally comes the polishing stage. I strike quickly using more paper towels to squeegee the excess soap away. Then with fresh dry towels I rapidly buff the dental statuettes to a gleaming shine. I am proud of this stage; many other dental impressions makers don’t bother shining up the models. When I am finished I fit them back together and inspect my work. They are a glorified grimace; for some a motley freeze frame of the present and the past. For others they are the straightly ordered similitude of a smile at the future. There is hope in all of them for the patients from whose dentim they were struck. For the final impressions are made more glorious by the story they can only tell when sitting side by side with the earlier record of the orthodontist’s charge.