The Tooth Fairy Cometh

Finn, aged 6.9, has lost three teeth now, and it's making me feel pretty sad.  Why does he have to grow up?  On the other hand, he is very happy with the situation, since he is obsessively saving money to buy Legos all the time, and the Tooth Fairy usually comes through with pretty good cash.  So the other day, (remember when I was writing and all of the kids were down for a nap?), one of his loose teeth fell out.  But he didn't tell me.  When he got up from his nap, he asked me for a plastic bag, because he said that Gus wanted one, and when I asked why, he just brushed me off and said he just really needed to get the bag for Gus.  Distracted by a million other things, I gave him a bag and forgot all about it.  Fast forward to the next morning, when I come downstairs to see Finny sitting dejectedly on the couch in his room, sulking.  Since it was the first day back to school after Spring Break, I assumed that he was making a little point about being unhappy to be going back to school, so I told him to get going, get dressed, etc.  He did what I told him to do, but he was still grumpy, so finally I gave in and asked him what was wrong.  His response was, "I kept a secret from you yesterday."  My heart almost stopped.  After imagining and then immediately discounting a million different terrible scenarios, I calmly asked what the secret was.  As you, reader, already know, the secret was the lost tooth, which he had put under his pillow the night before hoping to surprise me in the morning with what the Tooth Fairy had brought him.  But, of course, the Tooth Fairy hadn't come at all, and in the morning, the little bag was still there with his tiny little tooth in it.  For a minute, I thought I was totally busted.  I really had nothing.  Grasping at straws, I finally told him that the Tooth Fairy only comes to your house if your mom and dad send out a special signal to let her know that there is a tooth to collect.  I could see Finny doubting this, since this was information that he had never heard before, and he followed up with the logical question, "why doesn't the Tooth Fairy just know?"  "She's super busy" was my awesome come-back.  I think he bought it, but only barely.  

He was happy today when he found that the Fairy had left him $5, so he'll probably suspend his disbelief a little longer, but I think it's only a matter of time.  I'm not sure why it makes me sad for him to be getting to the age where he finds out that all the magical stuff of childhood- Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, etc, is nothing more than an elaborate hoax.  Obviously, part of it is that he's growing up and that means accepting other unpleasant truths about myself (wrinkles, sagging body parts, my eventual death), but it's also just a big disappointment that that stuff really isn't real.  I think I took it pretty well when I found out about everything as a child, but as an adult I find myself nostalgic for the days when I really, really believed in magic.  Once that door closes, it's closed for good, and you don't even realize that until you grow up and look back at it, by which time you've also realized that "life isn't fair" isn't just something your dad was saying to be annoying.   

One of my friends recently joked that she wished the Easter Bunny had brought her some new cabinets, and we agreed that it would be nice if just one of them were for real - we would even accept a visit from a leprechaun, so long as he had a pot of gold and we didn't have to hang out with him.