This is the story of two front teeth, a wooden slide and a weekend call to the dentist. I promise the story has a good ending (or two or three) so you can read on and know that it’s all going to turn out fine.
When Swap Shop and Roost board members and I started walking from business to business around the inner south east last summer looking for community minded businesses willing to sponsor youth at The Roost, I had no idea the great twists and turns this fundraising effort would take for our co-op and for my own family.
As we are about to round into our second year singing the praises of local businesses, I am astounded at how much I have learned (about old fashioned pianos and car care and more) and delighted at the resources that my family and all our families have at our finger tips. I couldn’t be more grateful for our Roost sponsors than on one fateful weekend last spring.
My kids are true community kids. I’m pretty sure they spend more time at Sunnyside Park, Sunnyside School and inside the Sunnyside United Methodist Church building than they do in their own home.
So it was with ease that I asked a co-op member to watch my youngest daughter Claire and her friend at our Saturday night dinner theater performance at the swap shop while I finished closing up the big swap day at the April Useful Goods Exchange.
When my cell phone rang about 30 minutes after I said goodbye to Claire, I answered and heard big crying in the background. At first I just assumed I was hearing a toddler at the swap shop. But it was Claire I was hearing who, in an act of strange physics, slipped on our wooden slide in the big kids room in such a way that she broke out a big part of her two front teeth.
I didn’t have to take two steps to find people at the exchange willing to close up for me and I rushed over to help with the ice pack and drying tears and figuring out what to do next.
Of course, this was the weekend that our regular dentist went to the beach with out his cell phone charger. So this was the weekend that I called our Roost sponsor dentist, Aaron Tinkle of Belmont Family Dentistry, and got a first hand experience of his calm, friendly, easy manner.
Before you start feeling sorry for Claire, let me assure you that, to an eight year old kid, showing off her big front teeth gap and then her new front teeth caps to classmates, family and the whole dental staff at Belmont Family Dentistry far and above made up for the downsides of the incident.
I’ve always regretted not taking any high school or college chemistry classes but I feel like I got a whole chemistry lesson watching Aaron mix up just the right colors for Claire’s remade sections of her teeth. If you look at her today with that big 3rd grade, almost 4th grade, toothy grin, you wouldn’t even know she knocked them out.
And how good of a dentist is Aaron Tinkle for kids? I think Claire likes him almost as much as she likes her third grade teacher so, after all the bonding they did over fixing her front teeth, it was easy to start making him our family dentist.
And it’s a good thing Claire likes and trusts her dentist (and his staff) because when we went for her regular check up last week . . . my car battery died. We ended up walking up hill to 60th and Belmont from the Swap Shop (good thing they give out prizes at the end of your visit) and when she heard the news that I’d be spending her appointment getting a jump start instead of waiting right there with her she skipped ahead of me on the side walk and said, “Mom, I’ll be with Dr. Tinkle. I’ll be fine.”
OK, so maybe I’m just the sentimental type, but somewhere between this little scene and watching my oldest daughter, just newly in middle school, make her own appointments with the staff at Parkside Orthodontics, I really do feel like I live in a village.
And, as much as I enjoy the “village” life, I’m also glad that we live in a big city and have great specialists like Dr. Amna Shabani at Children’s Dentistry right over the bridge in Vancouver. I know our Swap Shop board member Karen Ehn recomends Amna any
chance she gets and is very grateful for all she does for her sons Charlie and Henry.
So, whether you are making a planned appointment or needing urgent help over a holiday weekend these three dental offices come highly mom recommended:
Dr. Aaron Tinkle
5935 SE Belmont, Portland, OR 97215
(503) 234-1218
Dr. Amna Shebani
1405 SE 164th Ave. Vancouver, WA 98683
360-260-0511
Dr. Rebecca Kuperstein
539 SE 39th Street, Portland, OR 97214
503-236-3800
