Caleb lost not one, but two teeth yesterday and had a delightfully magical visit from the Tooth Fairy last night. Recently his right bottom tooth had been getting looser and looser, but not enough to come out. Yesterday he came home from school and told me that he had bitten into a carrot at lunch and made his bottom right tooth (which up until now had been marginally loose, but not really ready to come out anytime soon) very wiggly. He demonstrated with much pride the wiggle...it was moving about 80 degrees with his tongue and the other tooth as well. I told him that they would fall out when ready--so LEAVE THEM ALONE! His enthusiasm with this new wiggliness was too much to resist and he kept pushing them with his fingers and tapping them, so that the one was actually bleeding. So I told him I'd see if it was ready to come out--so we dried the tooth off with a towel and I tried a gentle pull with my fingers. Nothing. I told him to again leave them alone.
An hour later, he wanted to show me just how much more wiggly they were (presumably due to his own efforts, despite my advice, in the meantime). His front left tooth was now bleeding due to his clandestine efforts. I then told him that I'd see if it came out with a gentle tug...we dried the tooth off again and I tied some dental floss around the tooth. I didn't even manage to get a knot in the floss before I saw the open side of the natural absorption of the tooth at the back of it. So, with the one movement of making the first "criss cross" of the floss, the tooth came out. I then dried off the other tooth and it came out with a gentle tug of my fingers alone.
So there he stood in my bathroom, holding his two newly lost teeth...and somehow looking so much older and more grown up than just moments before. There really is no describing the act of sharing in this ritual that I myself remember so vividly from my own childhood, or the pure joy and glee of taking in and rejoicing in his reactions of delight, surprise, accomplishment and perhaps a tad of sorrow in the realization that the journey and its finality, in the actually separation from the teeth, was now...over. (I do suppose that there is a mourning as well as rejoicing in all of our "benchmark" passages. Truly, the journey and anticipation of the final end of that journey, is, for the most part, the most delightful part of it all. Once finality has been realized...the joy of those moments are most often, whether immediately realized or not...tempered with the momentary sorrow of recognition that the "journey," whatever it may be, has found its conclusion. His reactionary response, in which I noticed the slight let down, was not enough to damper the following pride and joy in having finally passed that long-awaited threshold and benchmark that most of his classmate peers have already experienced--losing those first teeth. As if, "Done! Yeah!...but wait...was that IT?" Then came the discussion of the TF and her possible or probable factual reality and existence.
He then purposefully announced that he would place these under his pillow tonight and prove, once and for all, that the Tooth Fairy does not exist. I took it as a challenge. So I set about making a little certificate from the TF. This was not the "quick little print-out" that I assumed it would be. Arrg. So, after much perturbation from googling silly and overly advert heavy sophomoric www's with TF ideas and "free printables" that only led to endless ad-clicking-nausea-inducing-waste-of-my-time-websites and a labyrinth of ad clicking, I decided to work with what I had and assume that my six yr. old would not expect the TF to be as artistically gifted as she would have been had my husband had been home from post-school-end-of-year-meetings, planning, grading, etc. (This is all to explain the rather pathetic and un-fairy-ish letter that Caleb received...however the Fairy Dust trail left behind was the tipping point for believability and the one thing by which I am most tickled and amused and joyed.)
(As an aside...my previously stated perturbation WRT creating a believable, creative and boy-friendly "cert" was much compounded by the lack of downloadable Microsoft Office templates for Mac..."WTBS!??..."What the bologna sandwich?"(as an aside within an aside and parenthesis within parenthesis...my favorite shreeking outburst these days with my kids within earshot is, "Fudge brownies with walnuts and extra chocolate!!!!!" ... above board, but still makes me feel better...) So...I finally ditched the Mac-applicable Word template searches and decided to go bare bones, work with what I had and call it a night shortly after finding the craft glitter that most resembled my personal estimation of what I imagine Fairy Dust to look like.
Certificate and glitter in hand, I snuck into his room and made the switch. I then proceeded to leave a little trail of glitter about his pillow and bunk bed and then a little trail to his window. (He pointed out in the morning the discrepancy between the letter's statement that she entered under the door and the fairy dust at the window, to which I responded she must have EXITED through the window...with hopes that my oversight would be forgotten.)
Upon waking at 6:15 a.m. (or rather MY first entrance into the room to call out my "good morning's", turn on lights...which was most likely repeated two or three times...although I cannot remember myself because I was also so very tired!) Caleb finally checked beneath his pillow as if he forgot the whole tooth affair (understandably at 6-ish! a.m.) only after I kissed him awake and asked what all this sparkly dust was all over his pillow? His face changed to show this "Oh, yeah..." and suddenly he was fully awake with an observable anticipation and ? perhaps a steeling of himself for the ultimate disappointment, only to find a letter from the TF with $20 HKD. He then replied, "Oh. Huh. So...It's $20 for two. Oh. ... Oh!! (insert his efforts to sound out the letter...) then, "Mom, read it!!" I did. Then, the Fairy Dust trail was discovered and exclaimed and rejoiced over, as well as the previously mentioned discrepancy of the location of said Dust.
Then...in a truly laughable and sweet moment of childhood magic...Elijah proceeded to "gather" as much fairy dust as he could, rubbed it all over himself and then ran into my bedroom proclaiming loudly that he seems to be shrinking! Of course...cuz the TF uses her magic dust to shrink herself to squeeze into kid rooms... I then told him to be careful...he wouldn't want to shrink his powerful muscles...and oh yeah, put on your school uniform-b/c we ARE late getting ready for school...again!
So--it was a magical, special day...and this telling doesn't include the jaunt to the beach for an afternoon session of body-surfing, waves that crashed Cay to the ocean floor and the bloody nose that followed or the cute and endearing wet sand fight that Bodhi initiated with me...but my inability for brevity prompts me to leave those tales for another post.
To try and sum it all up: I was honored, humbled, blessed, tickled and filled with an immense joy to share this transitionary and yet still magical experience with my boy. I gaze in amazement at him a lot lately and find myself in a state of wordless wonder...how the once babe is now a boy who is now a big boy...bigger each day. I desire to preserve and maintain all the wonderment and magic and mystic amazement of each childhood moment that I can. Goodness knows that in our culture these days childhood innocence is for sale cheaply--and even if you try and preserve it for your own...peers can often quicken the sale by proxy. So I rejoice that this tiny bit of magic was still able to amaze him. It will all fade away all too quickly...fade, be taken piece by tiny undetected piece...until one day soon, I know I will look into the eyes of my boy-soon-to-be-young-man who has had all the magic and wonder and endless possibilities of a world in which the TF does indeed exist...and find one who must look into the scary reality of the world into which he will soon be plunged.
I will relish this. I will remember this. I will hope to preserve this innocent wonder as long as I can. (Insert my long and heavy sigh here as I now plunge into the heavy responsibility of figuring out to prepare him for that scary world while also guiding him in a way that he could be one who enacts change in that world.) But for today...my babe is a boy. The Tooth Fairy is real and pretty messy with her dust. My middle son thinks he is shrinking from the dust's magical powers. Today...Life is good and pregnant with all the wondrous, magical, amazing and innocent possibilities that it should be.
Three amazing, healthy boys with talent, imagination, an unbridled thirst for books and stories, an innate and genetically gifted predilection for music and rhythm...An incredible husband who is unimaginably and tirelessly providing for this large family and all it's needs with his amazing work and compassionate heart...
... Life. She is indeed good. So very good indeed. (Now...to the dishes and laundry and ... and...)
Meg
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