I was sitting at dinner with Isaac the other night when he said to me, “Mommy, I ate a bad apple for snack after school today.” When I asked him what was bad about it, he said, ” It hurt my tooth when I bit into it.” OMG I thought! Really??? He is only 5, could he have a loose tooth already? … Open Up, I almost shouted at him, and with a little wiggle, it was confirmed: Isaac had a loose tooth.
I had a deadline that day for another project, but all the way home from dropping Isaac at school I felt the pressure of making him something to put his tooth in. I clearly remember the little tooth fairy pillow I had as a girl. It was one of the most special things I remember owning. I wanted Isaac to have something similar to remember this big milestone by. I ran into the house, found my felt stash, and quickly – we are talking 15 minutes – made the above pillow. Sometimes the quickest project turn out the nicest. There isn’t the same amount of expectation and the time pressure really forces you to go with your gut.
It wasn’t until a week later that Isaac actually lost his tooth. He woke up and told me that it was VERY loose and really bothering him. He was worried he was going to loose it at school, or at his first tball practice. He also told me his other tooth was now loose. I tried to calm him down, and tell him it wouldn’t hurt when it came out. When I picked him up from school that afternoon his teacher told me he has been complaining about it at lunch, it was difficult to eat. I asked him to open his mouth, and he was minus one tooth! When I told him it was gone, he immediately got upset, how was the tooth fairy going to know where to go, and would she leave something if there wasn’t a tooth in exchange. I reassured him that the tooth fairy didn’t need the tooth for either of these things, and that I had eaten my own tooth as a child (a parental lie) and that we would sketch his tooth when we got home so that he had something to leave under his pillow for the fairy to take in exchange for whatever she left him. This seemed to satisfy him, and so we carried on.
When he woke up and found his tooth fairy stash – at 6:00am- we heard all about it. He was ecstatic. He got different kinds of money, all of which he had no value other than the fact that they were different colors and had different numbers. Most importantly, and really the cutest, is that he BELIEVES in the tooth fairy. She is apparently very very small, and sneaks in through the window, and really truly exists.
We are Jewish, so we don’t talk much about Santa, but I would imagine that listening to your child talk about the tooth fairy, and seeing the excitement in his eyes of something we as adults know all to well is not ‘real’, is the reason Santa is so popular. Its sweet, and innocent, and a reminder that although he has ALREADY lost his tooth, and taken one more step toward becoming a boy, he is still very much a little kid.
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