Excitement in the morning

I had to pull our family tooth fairy out of retirement last week.  I’m not sure if she was excited or flustered to be summoned on short notice after twenty-five years of laurel sitting, but she answered the call. 

The fairy-ing business has gone high finance over the quarter century ours has been enjoying her golden years – gone are the days of the tooth ex-change now they dish out dollars. I had a crash course in fairy finance and etiquette delivered by two little experts.  

My little girls explained that nowadays everyone gets their very own fairy, they are all different colors and have specialized skills. Apparently the last tooth picked up from their house had to be retrieved from a glass of water which turned blue after the fairy made her dive. That fairy’s name is Sparkle and she left a ‘fiver’ beside the glass. A fiver!

I suspect that Elf on the Shelf dude upped the ante on the fairies – he has a suspicious smirk and shifty eyes. He has already added a complicated layer to Christmas magic, I have a feeling he has now set his sites on fairydom. The ritual of trading teeth for coin has been usurped.

The girls had questions about the fairy business: Why did the water turn blue when the fairy went for a swim?  Can fairies still fly if they get their wings wet? Do they wear goggles when they swim and if they do where do fairies buy goggles?  A lot of questions.  A lot of pressure for a gramma whose last interaction with a tooth fairy happened so long ago loonies hadn’t been invented yet.  I said a silent ‘thanks’ to their mom and gave her a call after the girls went to bed. 

Our old fairy made a successful tooth ex-dollar sometime during the night.  I heard her rifling through my purse in the dark looking for a combination of coin to equal a ‘fiver’.  She left a note and answered all the girl’s questions in little tiny font.  I think she may have gone back into retirement with the sense that even as things change their essence remains the same – there was much excitement in the morning.