DEATH OF THE TOOTH FAIRY

My oldest son Jakob is in the 4th grade, and I’m desperately holding onto his childhood with both hands. Jakob was never an actual baby, he came out of the womb a little old man. The first few months of his life my husband, Erich, and I would jump around making goofy faces and singing silly songs to amuse him but he rarely cracked a smile. After awhile we realized he just didn’t think we were funny. At all.

Every parent tells you how fast it goes by, and none of them are lying. Jakob has already had braces on his teeth, which made him look so grown up that I had to grieve a bit. And not long ago it was time for him to get them off. We went to the orthodontist, who informed us that one last little baby tooth was loose and therefore they couldn’t remove the bracket without pulling the tooth. So they wrenched the final remnant of childhood out of his mouth and handed me a tiny white pearl with a shiny bracket still glued to it.

“You’re so lucky!” the orthodontist told him. “The teeth with brackets are worth a lot more to the tooth fairy.”

“They are?” my son asked in disbelief.

“Oh yeah, definitely. Because of the silver.” The doctor assured him.

That night when I went to tell him goodnight, Jakob let me know he had put the tooth under his pillow. But here’s the thing: His bed is up in a lofted bunk with a desk underneath. I began to panic. “Ummmm, aren’t you going to leave it down here on your desk like we always do? Just to make it easier…you know…for the tooth fairy?” I asked.

“Nah, I just put it under my pillow,” he said. “She can fly, it’s no big deal. Well, goodnight.”

Crap. Double crap! My son sleeps in this giant pillow/blanket nest on top of that loft and it’s too high to see into. Finding a tooth in there would be like the proverbial needle in the haystack. But I was determined. No way was the Tooth Fairy going to fail him tonight on our last hurrah!

Folks, it’s amazing how you can be alert and ready to sneak into your son’s room to root around for a lost tooth one minute and dead asleep the next. But that’s exactly what happened to me. I woke with a gasp at 3 a.m. The stupid tooth! What would my poor son do if he got up and the tooth fairy hadn’t come to get his last, super-valuable tooth?? I dragged myself out of bed and grabbed my fairy supplies: A stack of gold collector’s coins and a handful of fairy dust (glitter) and headed to his room. I sprinkled the dust on his windowsill and made cute fairy footprints in it. Voila! Authenticity.

Now the challenge. I held my breath. Slowly, slowly, slowly up the ladder to his bed. Who the heck’s idea was it to get a child a deathtrap like this to sleep in? Somebody (me) could die on this! It should be against the law; I made a mental note to write my Congressman. Yet I made it to the top without so much as a creak, all the while praising my agility and phat spy-master skills. However, what I saw at the top was a cluster of splayed limbs and bedding, six throw pillows and a head-shaped lump at a different end than it started at many hours ago. Triple crap! Where was the tooth? I felt around to no avail. It must be at the other end of the bed. The “NO ladder” end. *sigh*

Me and my nimble spy skills slunk back down the ladder. Now what? I spent five silent minutes decluttering his desk chair and carefully placed it at the other end of the loft. I crept up and hoisted my chin over the rail. Softly, carefully, I put my hand under the pillow. Suddenly my son sat bolt upright, his enormous pie-sized eyes six inches from mine in the dark. “AAAHHH!” He yelled. “AAAAHHH!” I yelled back, trying to control my heart attack and not fall off the chair.

“Jakob, it’s just me,” I whispered. “It’s Mommy.”

“Oh my gosh!” he stared, bewildered. “What are you doing?”

And just like the Grinch with Cindy-Lou Who, I thought up a lie, and I thought it up quick: “Oh, I heard you coughing up here, baby, and I came to check on you. Is everything all right?”

“I was coughing?” he mumbled. “Well…can I have a cough drop?”

Dang! Now I’d have to go all the way back downstairs for the stupid cough drop. “Of course sweetie,” I cooed. “I’ll be right back. You lay down and get all sleepy…” Bleary-eyed I trudged downstairs for the bleeping coughdrop and saw the kitchen clock 3:15. Soooo tired.

I gave him the cough drop and for the next 45 minutes I kept periodically trying to sneak back in for the tooth. And yet when my foot would hit the carpet he would sit straight up in bed, all wild-eyed and confused, looking around and then flop back down. CRAAAAP! I wondered why we go to all this bother for some ridiculous, elaborate prank on our children. I’m sure most sane people would have given up by now. He was going to find out the truth soon enough. But something made me want him to believe, even if it was just for a little longer.

So I played on the computer for 30 minutes, trying not to doze off the entire time, and then went up for a last attempt. At this point I was completely exhausted and I decided if he poked that melon-head up one more freaking time I was going to just toss the coins at him and say, “YEAH. I’M THE TOOTH FAIRY.” And get back to bed.

But that didn’t happen! I crept in like a ninja, climbed that chair, found the tooth laying in almost plain sight, left the coins and was out in 30 seconds. I couldn’t believe it. One more victory for mom! As I finally snuggled into bed I was warm with the thought of him waking up to the magic of the tooth fairy-- the wonder on his face at the glittery trail she had made and the treasure she’d left for him. Kids have to grow up so fast these days, and they have the rest of their lives to become cynics. But I had the joy of my baby being a baby for just one more night.

EPILOGUE
My husband came into the room yesterday and said, “Hey by the way, Jakob told me he knows you’re the tooth fairy. He said he caught you red-handed and you kept coming in his room waking him up all night. But he didn’t have the heart to tell you. So he finally pushed the tooth out on the bed where you’d find it and pretended to be asleep 'til you left. Just thought you should know.”