One day riding the bus with Mum, I remember being fascinated with how dark and dingy her bottom teeth looked. They were yellow and brown at the edges, and her gums were pale and receded. (She and my Dad both smoked and drank a lot, and I think those addictions far outranked oral hygiene as a priority.)

Mum’s face lit up brightly as she told me she was going to have her teeth removed. This sounded shocking and terrible to my eight year old ears, but she seemed genuinely excited about it. She went on to say that she’d be able to recover gold from her extracted teeth – “lots of gold!” she exclaimed, as if she were anticipating an absolute windfall. I didn’t know what gold was worth, but gauging by Mum’s face and voice, the contents of her mouth must have been very valuable indeed. The whole prospect felt scary and desperate to me.

Sure enough, Mum did get her new dentures, and I guess she went and cashed in all that gold somewhere. At the time, we were living with her father in Victoria and it’s likely my Dad might not have had a job. He had griped about how difficult it was to find work there. Probably nobody in the house had very much money. Victoria had not been all that easy for us.

In dream symbolism, having one’s teeth fall out can represent anxiety over irreparable loss, such as the possible death of a loved one, like a parent or partner, or over one’s own loss of power or ability, through age or disease. But selling one’s teeth just seems like an act of desperation.