My oldest just lost her last baby tooth. It’s sweet—my girl still claims to believe in the Tooth Fairy, Santa and the Easter Bunny.  She used to leave the loveliest notes for Santa and the Easter Bunny. This year note to Santa seemed like it was going through the motions. It was less heartfelt than it had been in previous years.  

Here is the note she left for the Tooth Fairy:

Dear Tooth Fairy,

I lost a tooth a while back and never got cash.  Because of your overdue-ish-ness, it is gone for good, so for that lateness I would like to charge you $15 extra, plus $15 for the fact it was a molar, and my second to last baby tooth, and VERY painful.  So your ending cost + tips for keeping my teeth in awesome condition will be $30.  Please Note: I like 100% tips. 

xoxo-

L

What a cheeky monkey! I brought it to my husband, and we laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe. “Do you remember the time she made a tooth out of gum and tried to trick the Tooth Fairy?” my husband asked.  I do.  She had lost a tooth, like really lost it, lost it. She thought the Tooth Fairy wouldn’t come if there weren’t a tooth to collect so she made her one.  The next morning she came downstairs, devastated. 

“Mommy, she didn’t take it,” she said.

“What?” I was busy with her brother, a baby at the time.

“Dentina.” She stood there with her fake tooth in her hand, her little lip quivering. 

Dentina is her Tooth Fairy’s name.  She left her a note after she lost her first tooth, introducing herself as my daughter’s Tooth Fairy and how excited she was to be assigned to her.   

“Well honey,” I scrambled to think of something, “she knows it’s not a real tooth. I bet if you leave her a note tonight explaining that you lost the tooth before you could put it under your pillow she’ll understand.”  So she did. 

It wasn’t the last time the tooth fairy was "late."  More times than I can count we’ve forgotten about the Tooth Fairy only to scramble and hide money quickly while asking her, “Are you sure you checked everywhere? Could it have fallen inside the pillowcase?” 

The latest note came on the heels of her telling me in a blaze fashion, “the Tooth Fairy didn’t come for my tooth and now I can’t find it.”  She looked at me a beat too long.  “She knows,” I thought. 

I haven’t asked her if she still believes. I also haven’t volunteered that we are the benevolent givers of money, gifts and candy at various holidays.

I think she knows, but she’s not willing to let go of this piece of being a little kid yet.  She’s 11; young for sixth grade but a sixth grader non-the less.  She’s teetering on the line between little girl and tween, as evident in her admonishing note to the Tooth Fairy. I’ve saved the note, like I do all the other notes from her, and put it in her keepsake box.

My husband asked a couple of days later if the Tooth Fairy had come. “Yeah, she gave me the normal amount of money and a piece of gum,” she said, “Why did she leave me a piece of gum?” 

“Could be as a reminder of the time you made a fake tooth out of gum,” I said.  “Or it could just be a goodbye present from her since you don’t need her anymore.”