“Mom, I have to tell you something reeeeeeeeeaaaalllly important.”
“Mom, Mom!” He was yanking my arm so I would face him.
“I have a WI GUH GL LY tooth.”
He pronounced each syllable slowly and added a syllable for extra effect. It was his first wiggly tooth, a day he had read about and hoped for since he was born, he says (more realistically, he’d been hoping for this since a few days earlier when we read a book together on losing teeth).
Our house has seen numerous wiggly, thrown-out teeth: if you multiply five children by the twenty teeth they each lose, it is quite the everyday event. The tooth fairy regrets committing to one dollar per tooth because she didn’t realize kids lose quite so many teeth, but you know, inflation happens; pretty soon your kid is saying that so-and-so gets five bucks a tooth, so you grumble and fork out the dollar even when your twelve-year-old—who should have lost all of his teeth forever ago—goes to the orthodontist, but can’t have braces because the X-ray shows he still has twelve—yes, twelve—baby teeth to lose. And you didn’t realize that you gave birth to a shark with so many blessed teeth to lose, but think it quite comical when your twelve-year-old is losing teeth alongside the five-year-old.
Oh, that drowsy tooth fairy. She is often desperate for sleep and forgets to make the surreptitious swap, and then we have kids questioning the truthfulness of the existence of all holiday schemes. And taking care of kids who lose so many teeth feels overwhelming because they don’t just lose teeth. They lose shoes, homework, and their favorite stuffy, the only stuffy that helps them sleep. And they drop things like milk, so much milk that your floorboards start to warp under their seat at the dinner table. And they lose tiny beads that mean everything to them and are one-of-a-kind, and they absolutely have to have that bead to make the intricate bracelet that can only be made with this one infinitesimal bead that probably rolled under the refrigerator or the stove. So, you search and sweep and move big things to find it. And sometimes you do find it, and sometimes you do not; and sometimes they are consoled by its substitute, and sometimes they are not.
And the tooth! You forgot about the tooth you have to swap out, and you don’t have a dollar on hand because who carries cash anymore? And you are just so tired because these glorious little humans who lose so many teeth sleep when they aren’t supposed to sleep, like the late afternoon, and they wake when they are not supposed to wake, like 6:08 pm, after a long nap, or 5:36 am because they have to pee. And well, you are just so tired that sometimes a wiggly tooth doesn’t seem worth stopping the grind to notice, and the traditions you tried to implement with the energy of a first-time mom lose meaning.
Until…
Until my fourth of five children has his first wiggly tooth, and I finally stop. I answer the sharp tugging on my sleeve, and he looks at me with big, surprised eyes. I stop with the shirt in my hand, ready to be folded. I let it hang carelessly on the edge of the basket. I throw up my hands and celebrate this first of what will become an excessive amount of wiggly teeth for the fourth of five children. I realize that though I’ve seen more wiggly teeth than I ever imagined, this excited, curly-haired, towhead yanking my arm has not, and he does not yet know that someday he will have so many wiggly teeth he’ll be yanking them out himself so he can get braces before high school, because this is still his moment, his first wiggly tooth. When he is grown and over the whole scheme of wiggly teeth and tooth fairies, he will forget to even mention a wiggly tooth to me then. He won’t put the tooth under the pillow and anxiously await, hoping to catch the tooth fairy in the act.
I leave the syrupy dishes to encrust in the sink. I leave the pounds of smelly laundry to must in the baskets, and I take the morning off to simply sit with my little boy. We call grandparents and he regales them with the whopping tale of a first wiggly tooth. We take pictures and send them to Dad, brothers, and sister at school. I ask him to wiggle it again and shout in surprise, declaring that it is definitely loose, and we talk about sharks who also lose lots of teeth.
The quotidian of parenting temporarily recedes into the background, milk seeping into the floorboards, a tiny little bead still lost under the too-heavy-to-move refrigerator, and a shirt lies wrinkling on the edge of the basket.
