And thus was born a new tradition

“Mom, who left the two dollars under my pillow?”

“What two dollars?”

“The one for my tooth.”

“You left a tooth under your pillow? Why?”

“For the tooth fairy!”

“Don’t you mean the tooth garbageman?”

“Who’s the tooth garbageman?”

“He’s the guy who looks around under your pillow and says, ‘Ew, a tooth!’ and throws it in the garbage.”

Grace at the walk-in

As you may recall, I went to the walk-in clinic a couple of days ago, where I was gently chastised for my over-clean ears. You will be pleased to know that I have been Q-tip-free for three and half entire days now. It totally sucks. But I’m going to push through. But this post isn’t about my ears. My waxy, crinkly, itchy, unsatisfied ears. This post is about the walk-in clinic — surely one of the least happy places on earth. Especially in Thunder Bay, during what has turned out to be a record-setting cold spell, two days before New Year’s. If you are at a walk-in in Thunder Bay in December, you already feel like crap, enough so that you will brave the cold and the waiting and the other sick people just to get some relief.

I have been amping up my meditation/mindfulness practice of late (a whole other blog post, or series of posts in itself; on the other hand, maybe no blog posts at all — you know, the first rule of meditation practice is that one doesn’t blog at length about meditation practice), and I decided to do my daily practice at the walk-in. Put away the phone, my borrowed copy of Blue Is the Warmest Color, and just sit up straight with my eyes open and be in the room, observe the people and the goings-on without judgment, with compassion. The attractive man sitting next to me, accompanying his elderly father; the young couple in their 20s, she with stomach pains each morning; the teenaged boy and his mom; the coughers and the hackers and the snifflers and the grey-haired man directly across from me burying his head in his hands and sighing. I did my best just to observe them all.

And then an elderly woman approached the young couple.

“Excuse me,” she asked them, “but do you by any chance drive a Honda Civic?”

They nodded.

“I just backed into your bumper,” she said, miserably.

The couple looked at each other, and then at her.

“Don’t worry about it,” said the young man.

The woman shook her head, uncomprehending.

“We just bought a new car,” said the young man. “It’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well,” he said, “… is it bad?”

“There’s a hole in it.”

He shrugged. “Enh. Don’t worry. We’re good.”

The woman looked like she was about to cry. “I’m shaking,” she said.

“Happy new year,” they told her.

And then she went back to her seat and the doctor called in the young woman, and I thought about how lucky I was to have seen that happen, how lucky I was to have been right there, right then.

Like gifts from little cannibals

I played Tooth Fairy last night for the first time. It was a long-overdue milestone: Rowan lost his first tooth years ago, but until last night had refused to participate in the whole tooth-under-the-pillow thing. “I want to keep them,” he said, simply, the draw of the loonie or twoonie not strong enough to tempt him to part with a bit of his own body. “Besides,” he continued, “you’re the Tooth Fairy, anyway.” And I shrugged. Clearly, I wasn’t going to be the Tooth Fairy anytime soon.

Rowan doesn’t seem to feel the need to keep close track of his teeth once they’re actually out of his mouth; he just doesn’t want to give them up to some unknown, ethereal entity. And I can’t say I entirelyblame him. As a result, though, every so often we come across a tiny, bloody tooth in a little tooth-shaped box, maybe on the kitchen windowsill or his bookshelf. They’re like gifts from little cannibals, the parts they couldn't eat.

But last night, for whatever reason — financial, perhaps? — he finally decided to participate in the narrative, including the time-honoured family tradition of writing notes with several caveats and explanations to the Tooth Fairy. “I hope you can get some more teeth,” he wrote in his best cursive. “Anyways, I wanted to ask you if you could not take my tooth but still leave me some money. If so, thank you very much.” He signed his name, and then added his address, as well as “Ottawa, Canada,” and, “Parents: Rachel, Susan.” When I asked him why, he explained that there might be more than one Rowan, so he wanted to make sure that the Tooth Fairy knew that he was the one on our street, in Canada — the capital of which, naturally, is Ottawa — with his particular parents. I nodded.

I love lost teeth. I love loose teeth. I love their potential, the excitement, the wiggle and crack and even the blood and jagged gums. I know that some people get squeamish at the sight of them, but I’m right in there, offering to give a dangling tooth that final twist to wrench it out into the world, gazing fascinated and satisfied at the bloody, empty space. I especially love it when the adult tooth is already poking its way up like a crocus underneath. I love it when both teeth — baby and adult — coexist in the same spot for a while, a metaphor for childhood itself. I love the reliability of teeth: they are so sturdy, but no matter what you do they will loosen, they will make way for the next cycle. The new teeth will grow up underneath, replace them. “I wish I could still lose teeth,” I said to Rachel last night after slipping a twoonie under Rowan’s pillow and removing his note to keep forever and ever. “It’s like a little do-over.”