CONFESSIONS OF AN EX-TOOTH FAIRY

Parents wear many hats—comforter, teacher, disciplinarian—but only a few of them are as fun as the Tooth Fairy. When I imagined our lives with children, I thought about my role as the Tooth Fairy. I knew which parts I would keep from my own childhood and dreamt of ways that I could make the character even more magical.   

I remember the excitement of the Tooth Fairy’s first visit to our house. She wrote a sweet note explaining how things worked in the Land of the Lost Tooth. Next to the note, my daughter found a silver coin left for a special first tooth and a new dollar bill saved for such an occasion. My daughter proudly showed her younger siblings what the Tooth Fairy had left for her. They all stared at the coin as if it was the Hope Diamond and my daughter placed it in her jewelry box for safe keeping.

As planned, the Tooth Fairy took the tooth back to the Land of the Lost Tooth and carefully placed it in an envelope with my daughter’s name and the date. Mission accomplished. 

Soon, our other children started losing their teeth. They got the same note, coin and treatment for their first tooth. Every tooth thereafter was collected before the Tooth Fairy retired for the evening and each tooth was given the same care as the first one. 

About five years after the Tooth Fairy’s first trip to our house, something changed. She didn’t leave notes anymore, she stopped putting dates on the envelopes and sometimes, she didn’t come for the tooth until right before the kids woke up. One time, she left four quarters instead of a dollar bill. How lame! What happened to the magical character in my dreams? 

When I discussed this with the Tooth Fairy in the bathroom mirror, all I heard were bad excuses—working mom, traveling husband, exhausted from carpools and coming up with dinner ideas. To make matters worse, she claimed that she was overwhelmed with the two extra kids we added to her route. The Tooth Fairy even suggested that our kids were eating hard candy as they were losing teeth at an alarming rate. I was appalled! 

Things went downhill from there. By the time my youngest child started losing his teeth, his sisters started working for the Tooth Fairy. She often came to our house unprepared and had to ask the girls to borrow singles in order to pay for their brother’s tooth. At the end, a lost tooth would sit in the Tooth Fairy pillow for a couple of days. I lied for the Tooth Fairy and told my son, “You lost the tooth too late in the day and you weren’t on her schedule last night” or “She sent me a text and said she was running behind and would pick the tooth up while you were at school.” Sadly, my son believed me.

Until he didn’t believe anymore and the Tooth Fairy was out of a job. At our exit interview, I asked the Tooth Fairy how she thought we did. She told me that the kids will remember the good things, like the silver coin and the notes. Yes, but what about the quarters and the forgotten teeth, I wondered. The Tooth Fairy told me that they will remember those, too. One day, they will be the one holding the wand and fairy dust and it will be a reminder that the Tooth Fairy is only human.