The Tooth Fairy Lie

My boy lost his third tooth yesterday, leaving him with the quintessential gap-toothed smile. My own little Dennis the Menace. At bedtime, he carefully prepared his tooth and a letter for the Tooth Fairy.

He wrote “How does one become a tooth fairy?” Damn. That was hard to answer at 10 o’clock at night, one glass (alright, two) of wine down. I could have left his missive unanswered, start to prepare him for the string of disappointments and unsolved quandaries he’ll face in his lifetime. Or I could have left a short sentence, like “Santa picked me out of a lineup.” Instead, I wrote a full page response, masking my handwriting by using cursive for the first time since fourth grade. I mean, if I was going to do this, I had to go all out, right? Hence the creamy bonded paper and letterhead.

The bit that created the most conversation? The line “Magic is real.” Wow. So far today my six-year-old has wanted to discuss rainbows, cross-pollination, oxygen in water, love, diamonds, the sense of smell, skin's ability to heal, a heart’s internal workings, energy transfer, how sperm collide with an egg and – voila - life starts. These concepts can all be explained by science, sure, until you get to “why?” Why. Follow out “why” with a long string of cause and effect, but at some point . . . why. Because. Magic is real. 

Perhaps I'm doing the boy a disservice by drawing out a fib which will be revealed in a few years, only to also reveal myself a liar. But I don't think so. In the minute, he's happy the Tooth Fairy took the time to answer him. In the big picture, there was no lie. Magic is real.