About a year ago, right after the girls came to live with
us, Mo lost a tooth. Not an especially
important tooth, just some lower incisor or whatever that popped out when she
was playing. She’d lost plenty already,
so beyond the potential for some fairy scratch, it wasn’t a huge deal for
her. She just shrugged, brought it
inside, handed it to us, and promptly went about her business.
But for Amy and me, it was a HUGE deal. It was the first lost tooth we’d ever dealt
with as parents. And because we had
doubted we would ever be able to have this experience, that tiny, nearly
weightless tooth in the palm of my hand made my heart pound and my breath catch
in my chest. We both looked at it for a
while, neither of us saying much, passing it back and forth and rolling it
between our thumb and forefingers, doe-eyed and contented.
That night, we reminded Mo probably thirty times to make
sure and put the tooth under her pillow.
I have no idea what her previous Tooth Fairy experiences had been,
probably not much if anything, so I think she was rather dubious of the whole
affair. She asked a few times if we really thought the Tooth Fairy was
coming.
God damn right she’s coming.
I had already been to the ATM at the nearest gas station, where a
tattooed tweaker broke my twenty and probably wondered what the hell I was on to be so happy.
When bedtime rolled around, I read to
them for a long, long time, ensuring they were soundly asleep before daring to
make my exit. You see, at the beginning,
Mo had an extremely difficult time falling asleep. She was scared someone was going to break
into the house and hurt her. Most likely
this fear was the remnant of some left over memory from her previous life, but
since she never could pin the fear down to one specific occurrence, it is
difficult to know for sure. When I say
she was scared at night, I don’t mean the normal “Mommy I’m scared of the dark”
fear. This was abject terror. And when it took hold, she was so panicked
that her fight-or-flight instinct took hold and she was a different kid
altogether, hyperventilating and kicking and thrashing and saying anything, anything, she could to keep from having
to stay in her dark bedroom. Night
lights didn’t help, because she thought they were going to catch on fire. Shay (who’s never had even a moment of fear
at bedtime…come to think about it, in any circumstance) even began sleeping with
her in the double-sized bottom bunk of the bunk beds we bought them. That helped a little, but at first, not much. So most nights, in order to avoid this fear
fiasco the moment I turned off the light, I had to sit and read for around
forty five minutes to ensure Mo was actually asleep, because she’d get so
panicked even at the idea that the
lights were going off she’d keep herself awake. And even then, about half the time, she’d
either wake up when I left and begin hyperventilating and thrashing around, or
she’d show up at our bedside in the middle of the night freaking out. On those happy occasions, I had to walk her
upstairs and put her to bed, prying her arms from mine. Then I’d have to sit guard at the top of the
stairs until she slept, which on more than one occasion left me asleep on the cold
hardwood floor in front of their bedroom until dawn began to break. If she heard me get up to leave, the process
would repeat itself. It was pretty
brutal those first few months. Luckily
she’s gotten over a lot of that fear and will sleep through the night around
99% of the time, but Shay still sleeps with her in that bottom bunk. Mo isn’t quite ready to let go of that yet.
I tell this story so it is clear how tenuous the Tooth Fairy
operation really was. Sneaking into a
little girl’s room who is already absolutely petrified and is only barely
asleep most of the night is risky business.
But it was extremely important the Tooth Fairy came for her tooth. Not just because Amy and I wanted to have
that cute little experience, but because these girls had had nothing but bitter
disappointment their entire lives. And
they had to know that in our house,
with us, they finally get to be
kids. And in my book, that means the
Tooth Fairy comes to visit them. Always. Without exception. There was more at stake than our parental
yearnings. It may seem overstated, but
the tone for the rest of their childhood hung in the balance. I was going to get up there and put that
fucking money under her pillow, even if it killed me.
And good Lord, it almost did.
After thirty pages of Harry Potter, the girls were snoring
their little kid snores. I snuck out as
quietly as possible, made my way downstairs, and began to get ready for Operation
Tooth Fairy. I set out the money on the
nightstand and my sneaky clothes (black tee shirt and shorts, you know, for
camouflage, and my mostest quietest slippers) in the nearby chair. I set my alarm for 3:00 a.m., got into bed,
and tried to fall asleep.
It didn’t work too well.
I kept waking up, thinking that I had slept through the
alarm and that Mo was going to find, yet again, that the Tooth Fairy had failed
to visit. This anxiety kept me awake,
watching the red digital numbers tick away in the darkness until it was time.
It took FOREVER to get up the stairs. With each creak caused by an errant footfall,
I stopped and listened intently into the silence, waiting for the scared
whimpers that would surely come should she wake. When I finally made it into their room, I
listened to both of them breathe. My
ears rung and my chest pounded as I approached the bed.
It was then that I remembered that Mo had shoved that damn
tooth sack deep under her pillow. How
was I going to get it?
But as I was thinking about how to best slide the pillow out
from under her head, Mo began to shift beneath the covers. I just knew that at any second she’d stop
moving, stare at the figure looming next to her bed, and lose her shit.
Instead, she just rolled over…and off the pillow. Jackpot!
Without further delay, I got the sack, replaced the tooth
with the dough, and hurried from the room.
Mission Accomplished.
In the morning, Mo was happy to find the money. I was happy to have been able to give that to
her, even though I was absolutely exhausted.
Fast forward one year.
Or, more appropriately, fifteen visits from the Tooth Fairy.
At this point, Mo has lost most of her teeth. She still has a few left to lose, but they
are far and few between. Shay, on the
other hand, is losing all her damn teeth at once. You should see this kid. She is missing ALL FOUR OF HER TOP FRONT
TEETH, and a bunch on the bottom. She
looks like a hockey player. Or an old
lady who forgot to put in her partials.
Seriously. She can barely
eat. Amy and I think that it might have
something to do with improved nutrition, but what the hell do we know. All I know is that right now, she’s
downstairs watching TV, tonguing yet another loose tooth about to fall out of
her skull.
When I was a kid, we had a cat named Liz. Liz was diagnosed with feline leukemia when
she was one, and the vet told us she only had about a year to live. Twenty years later, my dad finally had her
put to sleep.
I think that vet was full of shit.
In any event, Liz, due to her multiple ailments, only had a
few teeth. We’re not sure which ones
because no one wanted to get close to her mouth, which constantly dripped drool
that stank like a dumpster behind a seafood restaurant. But she was a good cat. Well, as cats go, anyway. She did, however, have an abnormally strong
affinity for McDonald’s fries. Every time
Dad came home with a bag, that damned old cat would just howl at his feet,
nearly tripping him as he walked. When
we’d sit down, Liz would howl from beneath our chairs until one of us would set
a fry at the edge of the table.
The howling would immediately stop, and a second or two
later, a little white paw would appear over the edge, pat around a few times,
find the fry, then paw it down to the ground where she’d take it up into her
inhospitable, toothless mouth. Now, I
know this is kind of mean, but after she’d have it clenched between her gums
and hanging out of her mouth like a soggy cigar, one of us would invariably
grab the end of it and begin pulling it out of her mouth. That poor cat would try in vain to clench
down on it with teeth she only thought she had until she lost control of it
completely. We’d laugh, give it back to
her, and she’d run off to some corner with it and gum it down. A few minutes later, she’d be back and the
process would repeat.
It’s hard not to think of old Liz cat when I watch Shay eat.
As one could imagine, at this point, I’ve played the Tooth
Fairy often. And man, is that Tooth
Fairy getting lazy.
After that first tooth and realizing how lucky I was to
retrieve the bag under Mo’s pillow, I began coming up with new rules. The first was:
“Don’t put the bag so far under your pillow! If it’s too far under there, she’ll just go
on to the next house because she won’t want to wake you. Put it next
to your pillow.”
Which led to:
“Just hang the bag from the end of your bed so she’ll know
where it is.”
The tooth before last stands in stark contrast to the
first. Shay lost one of those front
teeth on a Saturday. Football was on and
I had just had some friends over to brew some beer. I had imbibed some. Not terribly, but enough to make the Tooth
Fairy a little less careful when making a visit. That dumpy sprite tripped on a ton of shoes
and other random crap on the way to the girls’ room (which on a few occasions
showed how foul the Tooth Fairy’s mouth can be). She no longer worried so much about the
creaks and groans on the stairs, no longer worried so much about the speed in
which she carried out her oh-so-important duties. In fact, before she went into the girls’
room, she made a pit stop in the adjacent bathroom and urinated loudly in the
toilet for a solid minute. Finally she
made it into the girls’ room and found the bag lying on the floor beside the
bed (per the new instructions), fumbled with the tied drawstrings, fished out
the tooth, and threw in two bucks (some of which was loose change). At that point, the bag slipped from her hands
and it fell heavily upon the floor. With
a somewhat whispered “oh, God damn it!” she pushed the bag near the bed and fumbled
her way back through the darkness and downstairs.
The loss of Shay’s
most recent tooth left her with only one up top out of four. For some reason, that single tooth was far
more off-putting than all of them gone. But
it was hilarious to watch her carefully and tenderly brush it before bed, as if
it were her baby. We joked that we could
use her as a can opener, and she took it literally and of course wanted us to
try it. We did not.
And this last one was the pinnacle of laziness. Shay’s last front tooth fell out of her head
on Sunday afternoon while she was outside playing, which (thankfully) evened
out her gum line. Anyway, lots had gone
on that day, and we kind of forgot about the tooth. As a result, I forgot to go to the ATM and
all we had were dirty pennies and nickels sitting at the bottom of our car
cupholders.
Don’t worry, I didn’t give them to her.
Instead, that night, I asked her what time she had lost the
tooth.
“Uh, I don’t know…this afternoon. Like, maybe two.”
“Oh. Well, honey, I
doubt the Tooth Fairy is going to come tonight.
It’s the weekend, and she doesn’t check her computer for orders past
noon on Sundays, so I doubt that it made it into tonight’s bag. Like UPS or something. But I’m sure it’ll be in tomorrow night’s
bag.”
She was a little sad at first, but then forgot all about it
and went to bed. Amy glanced at me a
little sideways over that one, but the Tooth Fairy made it the next night and
paid double for the delay.
I guess I should feel bad, or at least, worse than I
do. But we’re getting into a grove of
normalcy, and in that normalcy, things slip.
They just do. And you know, we’re
happy with that normalcy. We don’t feel
like a makeshift family anymore, like we did those first few months when we
were all getting to know one another and figuring out how this was all going to
work out. It’s working out on its own
and it’s going well. Very well. We’re a family that is going to finally be
permanent. I didn’t mention it before,
but the girls’ bio mom managed to lose all rights to the kids and they are officially
up for adoption. When we got that news, we had mixed emotions. Not because we had doubts about adopting
these kids, which we are in the process of doing, but because it’s kind of hard
to be so happy about something so pathetic.
This woman doesn’t know, nor will she ever know, how awesome these girls
are. But we do. And we’re ready to have them in our lives
forever.
And I get to continue being the Tooth Fairy, lazy or not,
until these kids don’t have any more teeth to lose.
