Violet lost a tooth last week. It had been a while since she gleefully showed off a bit of tooth dangling by the tiniest bit of connective tissue as she pushed it forward with her tongue so that it rested on her lip.
I had not missed that experience.
But when she finally came home from school with a little plastic container full of her tooth, I knew that it was time for me to dust of my Tooth Fairy wings. And her tools.
We always had gold dollar coins on hand because we were bartenders. We generally hated getting those things because you can’t really put them in your $ drop for the night, nobody wants them as change, and you don’t want them as part of your tips for the same reason. (Bar culture pro-tip: If you enjoy paying for things in a novel, old timey way- perhaps while flitting around a Ren Faire using a leather coin satchel to purchase your mead and giant turkey leg, BULLY FOR YOU, otherwise it’s just an awkward way of payment.)
However, if you’re a Tooth Fairy, then using archaic seeming coins seems pretty on brand. I no longer have these coins laying around, so I was trying to come up with alternatives like coating a pile of quarters in glitter or turning some paper dollars into origami flowers that could be arranged to spell out BELIEVE , when all of my efforts suddenly became irrelevant.
“Are you the tooth fairy?” She asked this as I was getting her bath ready and Lily was twirling around singing about wolves eating pooping raccoons (don’t ask) and I was completely caught of guard.
“WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT?!” I most certainly did not shrilly yell.
Then I collected myself and whispered not to say things like that while her sister was around. She seemed to get where I was coming from on that last part, so she leaned closer and whispered, “Are you though? You can tell me the truth.”
And of course I would tell her the truth. Eventually. I told her that we could talk about the tooth fairy when it was just the two of us, but I didn’t want to upset Lily so we’d have do it another time. While the Tooth Fairy being destroyed for Lily before she even got to experience her highly anticipated but nonsensical and slightly creepy transactions for herself would definitely cause a lengthy, possibly violent, tantrum, my reasons for stalling went beyond that.
Violet seemed pretty relaxed about it. But I wasn’t taking the chance of having her be crushed without having the time to really talk it through. Once the Tooth Fairy is unmasked, it’s got to be only a matter of time before Santa and the Easter Bunny come into question. Maybe they’ll all dissolve into the bleakness of reality together and the next day she come out of her room with an obsession with boy bands and makeup.
She’s nine. I asked myself when I stopped believing and I just cannot remember. I want to say that probably means that I wasn’t traumatized by betrayal when I found out the truth, but when I was nine, I was going through such a massive wave of heavy, dark stuff that I think I tried extra hard not to let go of Santa and like beings even after my logic skills kicked in because I couldn’t handle losing that bit of hope and light in my little life.
Violet however, is comparatively normal and happy and well adjusted. And… she’s growing up.
So I gave her a five dollar bill folded in the shape of a heart for her little tooth and the next day what I told her was that the Tooth Fairy was sort one of those giving spirits that works through others. She worked through my mom and now she worked through me. I told her that when kids are small, the world can be scary. That’s why I keep a “nightmare stick” for Lily’s bad dreams. Teeth falling out might by upsetting to little kids, but the Tooth Fairy makes it fun and exciting….. plus it’s free money and if she wants there to still be tooth fairy, then all she has to do is let there be a tooth fairy.
The next tooth, she will be just as excited about loosing and she’ll leave it out for the Tooth Fairy with a wink and a smile for me and I will buy her tooth in cold hard cash because what I’m really buying is her silence so I can repeat this all again with the less stable one.
….I may have painted myself in a corner here..
