I AM THE TOOTH FAIRY
Don't let this confuse you. I know. You are also the tooth fairy.
It's one of those universal titles. Like when you are walking around in the grocery store and there are little people everywhere saying "Mom", and they are not your children, and it grows ever more confusing that you are just one of many millions of women with the same name. So it is with "tooth fairy". Except in this scenario you are just one of many millions of women (or men) who are complicit in the harmless charade that there is that one, solitary fairy, flitting about from bed to bed collecting little dead bits of our children's bodies that fall out of their heads.
Jonah is "at that age". The age when little dead bits of his body fall out of his head. He's lost four now, and I'm growing less mournful at the loss of his "milk teeth." His mouth is moving and spreading in the strangest of ways, giving me no choice but to hope for a better world. A better world being one wherein Jonah's mouth does not resemble that of a 50 year old English, drunkard. At present he is leaning in that direction.
Two days this week have ended in a stealthy transaction in Jonah's room. I slip four quarters into his tooth-pillow while removing the small mark of his childhood. I'll not admit to him, of course, that they could very well be the same four quarters he got last time he transacted with the tooth fairy. I dip shamefully into his "Disneyland" jar to reconcile these debts to tradition. My integrity would have me withdraw real money from my real bank account and deposit it with clinking finality into the jar Jonah so naively leaves on my dresser. This would do much to ameliorate my guilt whenever he declares his intent to save these new quarters in his "Disneyland" jar. Thus far those "new" quarters have all been "old" quarters already living in that jar, because I have NO quarters of my own. I have plastic that will, most assuredly, not be traded for a tooth.
I will count the remaining milk teeth and repair to the bank this week for a sufficient supply of dollar coins, and if we're going to concede interest, I might as well slip a twenty in the jar while I'm at it.
Behold the evolution of a six-year old mouth in just five days time.
"Snaggle Tooth"
"The Toothless Man"
3 comments:
I hope Jonah doesn't read your blog.
My kids know that the tooth fairy is doing anything but flying around (since I am a little on the heavy side for flying). In other words they know the secret, always have. I try to make sure they don't whisper the secret to other kids and let them in on the weird things parents delude kids with, we treat Santa the same way. So Elli this very morning with her hanging appendage dangling about her lips, says to me "I want crisp money bills this time mom" What are you gonna do, the ATM spits those out! So they know the secret and yet we pay them for those teeth all the same. Which is stranger, stringing on a belief in something not real, or paying them based on that same myth just because other kids do it?
Love this post, he looks great!
CHECK OUT THAT EYEBROW! Goodness, me!
and Aubrey... you told me about santa.
the end.
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