small white tooff

Precious and dear are the milestones of youth: haircuts, reading, losing teeth, and so forth. If you're a noncustodial parent, you kind of get used to downplaying all the stuff you miss because the little time you spend together is precious in itself. But once in a while, you do get to be there for one of those milestones, and you can't help but feel a pang of sentimentalism, nostalgia, tradition, poignancy...

So anyway, after months of wiggling this one and twirling that, Khymi lost a completely unexpected tooth on a piece of cucumber. It was a Chanukah miracle! She's looking forward to being a jack-o'-lantern next Hallowe'en.

Although this was her third tooth, it was the Tooth Fairy's first visit to the Small Red House. And because tiny incisors are in high demand right now in the Tooth Fairy Aerie (or so Dad theorized the next morning), the ol' Fairy left a golden envelope with a shiny quarter and two sets of butterfly stickers. After the familiar rustling and gasping that warmed the hearts of the bleary-eyed, reminiscing grown-ups in the next room, Khymi came running in to show off the envelope. It MUST have been the Tooth Fairy, she declared, because the envelope was sealed with a butterfly sticker!

She also decided that the Tooth Fairy lives in Baltimore. You see, back when Maria was living in Baltimore, we would drive past a sign for a dentist's office that was shaped like a big white tooth. This sign fascinated Khymi because she could tell it was a dentist even though she couldn't read it yet. But as she's become more aware the Tooth Fairy's existence, what more logical place for the Tooth Fairy to live than where there's a big tooth sign?

Maybe next time the Tooth Fairy visits, we'll sniff the quarter to see if it smells like Old Bay.