I'd gotten up with the dogs. Just a quick trip outside because it was too cold for a walk. Bogie and Cho Cho wildly celebrated their being let back in, which is cute but kind of makes me seem like an asshole. Dogs, when have I forgotten you that you need to rejoice like there's a chance that I'd forgotten you? I head back to bed with about thirty solid sleep minutes left. Of course that's a dangerous game. Those early morning slumber plunges could mean, like twice already this week, that your daughter has to wake you up ten minutes before she needs to get to school. But Lord they are glorious. (daughters and sleep, sure)
Today it wouldn't happen. Sarah was up. She looked somewhere between asleep and distraught.
"What's going on?" I asked and she did what she has to do every time a kid loses a tooth: remind me that a kid has lost a tooth.
Now she usually handles this on her own. She has to. I exit the world and there's very little that can bring me back. She's leveled all-out gangster beatings on my snoring mass but has been unable to raise me from the unconscious. I'm rarely deep, unless I'm asleep™.
So the issue was this:
Eliot was already awake,
had checked for cash,
and found only her tooth.
This after she'd written a note on the tooth envelope asking the Tooth Fairy to reply whether it's real or not. I mumbled to Sarah that I guess she kind of got her answer. Sarah was less amused and made a move to figure it out herself but, alas, I'm a dude and I love to (try to) fix things. My people haven't been able to slay dragons for centuries. Opening pickle jars, capturing spiders, covering up to age-old lies about coin-flinging tooth banshees. These kinds of noble deeds are what I live for.
I found Eliot standing on her bed and ready to interrogate. She told me she needed to sleep again because the Tooth Fairy still needed to visit her. I died on the inside. With the money envelope tucked into the back of my long johns, I moved in. I needed to Indiana Jones one package for the other, or the gig was up.
And, might I add, that maybe that's not such a bad thing all this parental trickery collapsing on itself so we can sleep. <--that sentence written for the soul purpose of linking to an entirely different piece on the Tooth Fairy. "What does your husband do with his time?" someone might ask Sarah. "oh, um...his hobby is being vexed by imaginary things."
So I made a move that brings me much pride and, very soon in this story, an enthusiastic end zone celebration between weary parents. The 2020 downward spiral will suck us into the inevitable shitter of January 2021, but we'll go out dancing. Because in one deft move (Yes, I'm talking myself up but, Christ, these moments are limited), I hugged Eliot and switched the envelopes. My limited magician training once had me handcuff myself to a car in Laramie and result in what looked like my being arrested when it was actually a security guard cutting me away from someone's Buick. I wasn't going to make a mistake again. A magician needs a distraction. Along with a hug, I lovingly growled, "She’ll show up when we least expect it," and all this to keep her clung to my neck while I jammed her tooth packet down the back of my winter underwear and placed the money under the pillow. Indiana fucking Jones.
I set her back down for a bit more sleep, and skittered away. The envelope had a hand-written note on the envelope, "Yes, Eliot, I am real. Believe." My wife's work, of course, with a bit of a cheesy magician’s touch on the end. I think she even surprised herself with that. But right now adults may need magical beings more than kids. It seems that, in lieu of cash rich, oral-obsessed night sprites, we have each other.
Local woman consistently lied to by parents.
I ran down the hall and bounded into the bedroom. Sarah was up and alert as if she were part panther. Her pose, if sculpted, would be called "Prepared for bad; hoping for good." I revealed that the switch had been made. And shit got lit.
Sarah whisper shouted yes yes yes and then danced whilst assaulting the air with celebratory punches. We then leapt into each other's arms and did as much of a dance as I can do. From down the hall we heard, "Mom!" and angels exploded into proximity with all the heartfelt song one early morning family can handle.
So needless to say, we believe. It was a big day for us. And if you should take anything way from this—other than it's never not a good time to make magic—it's that you should always have a tiny pouch of singles and coins (the good ones, quarter and above; Sacagawea and Susan B are Queens) for the Tooth Fairy. There's little more jarring to one's slumber than waking up realizing that you've forgotten to fulfill your children's fantasies about a secretive tooth merchant, yet there's little better than making it happen.