As my wife snuck into our son’s room to swap his tooth
for money, I imagined this scene playing out decades ago,
Dad, tired from a long day’s work, keeping his fingers crossed
that I stay asleep, Mom, tired too, tiptoeing to my bed that
tomorrow I might arise to enchantment, for she grew up dirt-
poor in Soviet Ukraine, knew how hard and bitter life could be.
When my wife came back, tooth in hand, it was a triumph,
the minor miracle done, as though the Tooth Fairy were real.
My son, who over breakfast palmed the five-dollar bill and
asked question after question about her, didn’t seem to mind
that we told lie after lie in response: he loved the story because
it’s a good story and all’s well that ends well. Yet there’s a moment
in a child’s life when he learns the world existed without him.
At first, this is so absurd, he ignores it. But soon, a photo from
before his birth will trigger confusion and rage, and explanations
simply beggar belief: to him there is no Before or After, only Now.
It will be years until he considers that, in time, all our teeth will
decay—that we can we awake to Nothing. I watch him playing
in the yard. Sparrows munch on worms; spiders spin their webs.
We are living a fairytale whose conclusion we cannot fathom.
