Listen to this story: If you’re in the car, or cooking, or just lazy… you can listen to me read this story for you, in the audio file below.
There is a pine tree in our neighborhood, on the way to school, where someone has attached small “fairy” doors unevenly around the base of the trunk. Most are inoperable, one has a fairy stepping out (as if to see who’s there). Another opens with a little latch, only to reveal the tree trunk right behind it. There is a tiny fence strung along the bark, too, guarding nothing. None of these inconsistencies diminish our daughter’s sheer joy whenever we pass it.
Another neighbor started a tradition with her daughter; to stand behind the tree and count to ten, then see if a fairy left a coin in one of the doorways. This is just the sort of thing our daughter loves, so we do it now, too. Her brother patiently waiting beside me or his mother, kind not to spoil the game. So far I’ve been caught out and only had pennies (ever weighing down my coin pockets), or nothing, on me. Somehow this has in no way diminished her joy, either.
She’ll cross a road twice, or backtrack if she forgets the fairy tree at first, just to stand behind its thick trunk and count to ten. Then she’ll come around, knock on each door and be in such a hurry she often misses the coin at first. How long this game might go on one can never tell.
Childhood development experts might call it a “phase”. Sometimes parenthood feels like riding out one phase after another. Some good, some miserable. Those you cherish and those you wish you could count to ten and magically make disappear. It can be deeply destabilizing.
Our daughter also has a wobbly tooth right now - her first. She has entered that phase. So fairies and coins are on the brain. But that game will take days, weeks even. She has a book from her grandmother, complete with a fabric envelope attached, addressed to the Tooth Fairy. Plus a heart-shaped tin with a tooth painted on it, both just waiting for the lost tooth. Anticipation is high! Each day the tooth wobbles a little further, like a Tic-Tac on a hinge, and she proudly shows me.
I remember that feeling, and to watch my children play with a wobbly tooth brings it flooding back to me. The sensation of my tongue in the gap, searching out the hollow base of the tooth, is visceral. It gives me shivers, but they’re ecstatic!
If I’m honest, I don’t recall that joy. That magic. I was more afraid. Perhaps she just hides it well. The anxiety, the unknown, the taste of blood. So I play along, and try not to get wobbly myself. The whole family does. While she’s standing behind a tree, wobbling her tooth, counting to ten, and wishing for a fairy to leave a penny.
Love it! My (just-turned) 7-year-old daughter has that same view of the world. Which unfortunately includes being scared to go to the toilet, or even into the darkened hallway in our big house. Something about some of her classmates talking about a monster in the school toilets. The fairies, the monsters... they're all real! I miss the reality of that too. I also don't miss the dread of having a loose tooth though.