Man, the things I dig up from the past. This time it's an exchange of letters that occurred between me and my daughters about twelve years ago when we had to endure a separation of many months, about which I might write more at another time. The ink is fading, the pages yellowed, dust clinging to the edges. They were under some other papers, which were under some books (the Norton Anthology of English Literature and the Collected Stories of Caroline Gordon), all of which were on a shelf, in a corner, in the back, in the dark. Looking through them took me back to their childhood (the girls were about nine and seven then) and to a renewed sense of how keenly I miss those days, days when the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus came into our home. Children rejuvenate us, for a while, with their ability to accept the existence of these mythical creatures as fact, while you and I have to struggle to keep the existence of God a fact. That the Easter Bunny hopped through their living room, that the Tooth Fairy passed through a closed window, that Santa came down the chimney, and that all went about their business while the children slept was no obstacle to faith. Neither was God and His angels. You tell a kid there's a God and it's like, "Oh, okay, that sounds right." They would ask awkwardly profound questions at times, such as "Why can't we see God?" - but, whatever your answer, it was still no obstacle. Of course, there came a time, in the face of the cynical onslaughts of their peers, who always seemed to be ahead of them, when we had to admit the unreality of these visitors who inhabited two realms - the natural and the supernatural - accompanied by the reminder that they were certainly based on the reality of God's love for His children, the little ones. Santa was the toughest. There were tears from the oldest. But she did her duty and kept her younger sister in the dark for at least another year until she too had to be told. The younger one, Elizabeth, more reserved by nature, did not cry, just stared off into some thoughful distance, letting the information register, then got on with life, seeing as how it was pretty good and the presents would keep on coming.

We were close in those days. Those were the days when you felt they were really yours, although, if you have children, you'll remember that no sooner were they born than you started wondering what they would be in life, whom they would marry. And if you had daughters your first realization was that no man on the planet was worthy of them. By the time they hit high school you can see them leaving. They still live with you but they're leaving. When they get to college, you understand your role as comprising something between a major and minor distraction, depending on the circumstances. That is when you realize that soon they must go off into a world, a life, in which you will play an ever decreasing part. If you have children you understand, and, if you don't but want to you need to understand, that bringing them into the world is just a long goodbye.

When the older one was about eleven she lost a tooth. I told her the Tooth Fairy would be coming that night. "You're the Tooth Fairy," she said. I said I wasn't no fairy. "Then Mom is." Okay, I said, do you want her to come or not? Of course she did, and then she slept like...a baby. A year earlier, perhaps, before she had discovered the awful, real-world Truth of the matter, when she still believed and the world was different for me, she had been visited by that winged being who could pass through material objects, and what I found in that stack of papers was a remnant of that visit. I must have had a lot of time on my hands, or else a child's innocence simply compels you to want to do....well, more. In the envelope beneath my child's pillow, the lovely fairy had left, in addition to some token coin of the realm, something worth more than mere money:

From the Tooth Fairy

Greetings, Bernadette, dear child. And, forsooth!
I had not expected to see this tooth
Quite so soon. But sometimes by force we extract
A thing whose time has come, leaving intact,
Of course, your soul, whose day is never past
And will prove Time's master at the last;
It may not be forced by another's will
(Say hello, by the way, to Elizabeth the Pill),
Nor taken by any but God alone
Who made you, and to whom you were known
Before any star was born. Before dinosaurs lumbered
Upon the earth every hair of your head was numbered.
We know this from Jesus, Our Savior,
(Once a child, like you, of exemplary behavior),
Who said that not even the fall of a sparrow
Is missed by God, for he loves to the marrow
All that He made; even fragments of body and soul
Left by sin will, in the end, be made whole.
Nothing was hidden from the Child-King's eyes,
So a tooth is a thing of significant size
To Him who was like us in all but sin,
Allowing no falsehood either out or in,
Who never let His lips be sealed
Against a smile, knowing all wounds are healed
By time, not vanity.Therefore, I love your tooth
As a relic from a child who speaks the truth
Like her Master. I pray that strength of grace
And will be yours to turn the Tempter's face
Away, that his blackened, toothless grin
(His permanent teeth never came in)
Be veiled by smoke of smoldering fires
His lies have lit for his fellow liars
And himself, that his head be bowed in shame,
Unable to behold one child's name
Engraved by her niche in the Tooth Hall of Fame.

Love, The Tooth Fairy
P.S. Brush and floss, brush and floss,
Don't wait to be told, be your own boss.

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Posted by William Luse at September 17, 2002 03:58 AM