It fell out of my daughter’s mouth and has been living in my purse for weeks now. Just sitting. Floating. Waiting.

We both forgot about it.  Forgot about her… the Tooth Fairy.

So, I suppose it’s finally happened. The day has arrived. My daughter no longer believes. I didn’t know what this day would look like. How it would unravel.  Would it come when I found her waiting in bed, wide awake, waiting to see if her mom is really the fairy that’s been writing letters and leaving money and slipping out a crack in the window to go to the clouds?

Would she just ask while I was driving on the freeway (which is when she usually asks the more difficult questions) leaving it impossible for me to turn around and look at her so we have these intense talks through rear view mirror eyes? Would she catch me one night as I try to slip my hand under her pillow without waking her and we would just stare at each other in horror and shock?

Or… would it just end. Like this. A fallen tooth that we both forgot about finding a home inside my purse.

For years there has been a love story between my daughter and her Tooth Fairy. Filled with drawings, questions, gifts, letters, giggles and tales.

The love story all along was shared between us… only my daughter never knew. Never knew that the poems she was writing were for her mom. The small trinkets she’d leave along with her tooth all live in my jewelry box hidden away. The questions she asked in long letters of what I looked like, where I lived, what I did with her teeth were all answered by me.

She never knew and she never will. Because it seems that the story is simply over. With no words. No fantasies broken. No childhood journey crushed by the truth.

It will remain in her memory as the Tooth Fairy- her Tooth Fairy. A beautiful, tiny creature with long blue hair and an emerald green dress who lived in the clouds and used this child’s teeth to help build a fairy bridge that could lead her way back to her when the next tooth had fallen. A fairy that was here when my baby needed her to be and quietly slipped away when the transition from child to teenager slowly emerged.

She will live forever in my girl’s memory… and in mine.

Childhood. It truly can be magical if we allow it to be.

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