It is a new modern, purpose-built building located in an industrial park, of all places, a short drive from where we live. The reception area is large, and there are offices and examination rooms and labs radiating out from that large introductory area, going well back into the building's capacious volume. Just as well it was a relatively benign day, since my husband elected to wait for me in our car in the parking lot, with our little dog. And wait he did.

I filled out the requisite forms handed to me by a courteous member of the staff, and there were many chirpy, courteous young women on staff, all wearing signature black uniforms, an odd choice for a surgical dentistry practise, employing a roster of some eight dental surgeons, I thought.

I also thought it was quite annoying that I sat there, among other people, on chairs lined up against the walls in that long, broad area, with its large executive-style conference table in the middle, the reception offices off at the end with its many glassed dockets and smiling faces behind each one, for forty minutes before finally being summoned into the inner offices.

The nurse who ushered me into the vacant examination room, expressed admiration for the unusual design of my skirt, and we talked about modern dentistry. She confessed she still felt vestigial fear and apprehension left over from childhood experiences at the prospect of committing to dental surgery of any kind, even at her age, likely her late 50s, and expressed her gratefulness at modern dental advances.

After she left, assuring me that the dental specialist would be along directly I withdrew the novel I was reading from my purse, and waited, reading it. Finally, after about 15 minutes, a burly man appeared, holding out his hand toward me and introducing himself to me by name. His manner, like that of the others within the establishment, was cordial and personable. But it was also more, a warmth emanated from him that extended his courtesy toward the personal.

He examined my mouth after questioning me at some length about my general health, and confirmed that it was a still-embedded wisdom tooth that he was tasked by my general dental practitioner to extract, not the molar that stands next to it, as I had assumed from the explanation and conversation I'd had a month earlier at my family dentist's office. And he guided me with a mirror to point out precisely where the area is located, pointing it out to me on an X-ray of my mouth that my dentist had forwarded. Strange that I could have garbled the message so badly.

This man is an oral and maxillofacial surgery specialist. He answered all my question in a gentle and unassuming manner, with a touch of humour that I appreciated. He appeared to be in his mid-60s, and, as he told me, a child of Holocaust survivors. He spoke of how moved he had been when he read a book about the psychological make-up of children of Holocaust survivors, saying that it reflected accurately his own childhood and younger years' experience, and how it had all affected him his entire life.

He also said how miraculous it seems to him, and it would to his parents as well if they were still alive, that he is able to visit relatives living in Jerusalem, in Israel, a Jewish state.  His parents came from Poland and that is where, during the war years from 1941 to liberation in 1945, they were imprisoned in concentration camps that were death camps, yet they managed to survive. To live another life, to raise children. And his utter amazement at what these traumatized people, like his parents, managed to make of their lives, reaching out to the wider community to aid in the building of hospitals, schools.

The miserable deprivation, fear and calamity that befell them was of such a magnitude, he said, we can never fully comprehend. He has visited Yad Veshem on a number of occasions, felt profoundly moved by the experience, yet understands that despite having grown to adulthood with parents who survived the Holocaust he himself cannot fully plumb the depths of what people like his parents experienced, and survived.

Finally, we shook hands, remarked to one another how much we had enjoyed and appreciated speaking to each other, and he ushered me over to an interior appointment desk where, again, perky young women were serenely dispatching their duties with cheerful quiet confidence. A bit of a comedy ensued as I attempted to determine where I should stand before the desk as there were others there also awaiting the opportunity to book further appointments, as I was doing, for the extraction of the offending wisdom tooth.

An elderly man whom I took to be about my age, insisted that I precede him and I in turn did the equivalent of 'after you'. This little exchange repeated itself until I finally agreed to take my turn before he did, though I felt his was properly the next turn.

During our exchange, I had noticed hanging on the wall a watercolour painting of a fishing dory with the form of a porpoise rising high out of the water beside the dory. He turned around to see what I was looking at, smiled, turned back to me and said he had been on the sea with the Canadian Navy during the Second World War. I must have expressed doubt, and he clarified how it was possible by telling me he was 92 years old. Impossible to ever come to that conclusion on one's own; he was sturdy, confident on his feet, very self-assured and articulate. His father, he smiled at me, lived to 104. His wife had died twelve years earlier, and his daughter now looks to his care; she, he said, is just like her mother.

One never knows what interaction with other people will reveal about the world around us.