Lilah loves losing her teeth. Always has. Both girls have, although Sophie’s have come out so slooooowly. A couple times under anesthesia, emerging woozy with an entire handful of them for the tooth fairy to appraise their fair street value. What is a clutch of forcibly removed teeth worth these days? Apparently more than just a few coins. She gives out jewelry for a pile of baby teeth borne of trauma.
The tooth fairy is the reason Lilah loves to get rid of her little Chiclets. Sure the gold coins are nice, and she keeps those in a little box where all the fairy payments and leprechaun gold mix together. But an actual fairy, and the head honcho in charge of teeth worldwide, no less, showing up in her room, reaching under her pillow, and leaving her a NOTE!? Best thing ever! I’m gonna knock out all my teeth one by one so she comes and visits all the time! The pain, blood, and month of liquid meals are totally worth it.
I’m still in charge of the final extraction, it turns out. Which is bad enough of a forced avocation, but with it goes the mantle of judging when they’re ready to come out. Which for Lilah is never soon enough.
“Daddy my front tooth is ready!”
Imperceptible wiggle by my expert check. No way.
“Honey it’s not close. Keep wiggling it.”
“Dad! It’s ready! I know it is, just pull it out!”
“I’m not cleaning that much blood up tonight. Keep wiggling.”
“Aaarrgh! I’m gonna go eat another apple.”
Fill in another couple hundred identical conversations in the next week. Every conscious hour or so. Constant twisting and wiggling, enough to make my skin crawl for the rest of my life. And then they’re both ready, one front tooth quickly following the other, due to the constant acts of war she visited on her mouth the whole time. She missed half the plays on her side of the soccer field that Saturday, wrestling with her teeth, a far-off look of excited fury in her eyes. All leading up the glory of her sad little teeth on my hand. Fairy on the way, Christmas on the doorstep. The morning brings her little pocket pillow full of doubloons, and a stamp-sized note from a fairy in hand.
I have no idea how the tooth fairy can write so small. The words are only legible to little girls, unless you put it right under the light, take off your contacts, and squint real close. Which very few little girls have to do, so they get the secret message right away while we aged interlopers have to squint and guess.
The best part of all of it is that the lisp is back. In all reality, not the lisp, but a lisp nonetheless. Not Lilah’s original, legendary lisp that made ‘hello, fairy,’ “hewwo, faiwy,” but a damn good one in anyone’s estimation. Having no front teeth can make any sentence an entertaining adventure.
“Daddy I juth read Walthuh thhha fathhhing Dog. Walthuh. Walthuh! Dammith! I canth thay Walthuh!”
“Lilah don’t say dammit. And it’s OK, I know you’re trying to say Water the Farting Dog. Plus it sounds damn cute so don’t worry about it.”
And it looks so damn cute. I make her smile for all the pictures with her teeth showing for full effect. Soon enough she’ll have those adult teeth in there, looking impossibly giant for her face. Odd how the front teeth come in as the first part of the adult face, the tiny harbinger for the rest that is still a ways off. But closer and closer.
Hopefully they don’t come in like mine did. Bugs Bunny large, and splayed out in a ‘V’ like a pair of balancing legs. I kept my teeth from showing up in a smile for 3 years, except for the one picture where I forgot my shame for a split second. Mom still proudly shows me that photo annually, so I was right to shut it. Light blue suit, crooked goal post smile. Ugh. Keep smiling, Lilah.
But for now there’s just the gummy smile and the temporary lisp and the building flurry of Christmas that I am so disconnected to this year, so busy with everything else. Christmas music in the drug store, US mail jeeps suddenly zooming around us every minute of the day, the Griswold fairies having torched every house on our block (except ours) with vast lights and animatronic reindeer and Christmas cheer up the wazoo. And our house, dark and tree-less. Too full of work, soccer hell, and school to be festive yet.
But at least we have our own little elf, Lispy, to rely on. She doesn’t want her two front teeth this Christmas, thank you very much. She’s in the parade again this year and doesn’t give a crap about being able to whistle. She doesn’t have to! Santa raps on her window and leaves her a Goddamned note. His handwriting may be fancy, but at least you can read it.
This is a darling story ~ “Lispy” the Elf, right there for you. This shows the strong magic of fairydom, when a 7 year old can voluntarily go through the pain of giving up her teeth just to experience the twooth of faiwieths.