So, Morgan lost her first tooth last week.  As luck would have it, the little tooth next door is planning to make its exit any day now.  At first, the second wiggler didn’t look like it had any wishes to vacate the premises as it was holding firmly to the gums.  A few days later, however, things looked decidedly different. I wouldn’t say it was hanging by a thread, but I kept seeing it swirl away down the bathroom sink after a vigorus brushing.

Morgan has been doing tree climbing camp this week with Riverside Outfitters.  Over the last few days, she’s been outside, climbing, identifying trees, zip lining and tomorrow, they’re going kayaking in the James River.  How cool, right? As a precaution, I packed a little Ziploc baggie with her name on it in case the aforementioned tooth decides, “Hey, this particular copse of deciduous trees is an ideal spot for me take my leave,”  (insert groan here).  Thankfully, when I picked her up today, she still had her tooth.

This afternoon, Morgan was feeling particularly adventurous and was more than willing to let me try my hand at plucking out the tooth. I am SO excited that she is losing teeth. I made a special trip to the bank and got some Sacajawea dollars to leave instead of just some ol’ dog-eared G.W.’s.  I think this is another way in which she is growing up, something so obvious and visual.  I mean, seeing her learn to read, learn to swim, posing questions like, “What are sanitary napkins and why shouldn’t I flush them down the toilet” when we are in a public bathroom — I mean, those are fleeting instances.  The loss of teeth and the resulting gap, the absence of something from infancy making way for something of her adulthood; it is just so poignant.

Another mother and I were talking the other day about the whole Tooth Fairy racket and so on.  This mother went on to say how she was afraid her daughter, whose tooth was dangling by a thread, would swallow the tooth in her sleep.  She didn’t want to scare her little girl by saying as much and so she suggested that they work together to extract the tooth before the girl went to sleep.  Basically, she reached in, gave it a yank and *poink!* (or some other sound effect), out it came.  The major take away for me from that story, though, was how the mother said, repeatedly, “I had to earn her trust.”

I think we take for granted that our kids trust us.  Of course they do,” we think, “We’re their parents!”  But again, I think about how the loss of teeth, the growing up that comes with it, also reminds us that our kids are growing up more than just physically, right before our eyes.  We’re asking them to trust us with their minds, bodies, spirits.  The total package is just as precious as when it was first delivered into our waiting arms as it is now. I think we owe it to our kids to ask them to trust us, not just assume that  they blindly will and do.

So, tonight at dinner, just as I’ve done at every meal, I asked Morgan about her tooth. “Tooth-watch” we’ve been calling it.  “Still there,” she tells me, giving it a jiggle.  “You just have to be patient, Mommy.”  Talk about the student becoming the teacher.   And since I’m not impatient and more giddy about the Tooth Fairy coming, giddy still to see my Morga-lou grow up right in front of my eyes, I offer to tie a piece of string to the tooth and the other end to a doorknob and see where that gets us.  But first, I preface the whole thing with, “If you trust me. . .”

Suffice it to say, after several valiant attempts, the tooth is still firmly in her mouth.  Not for lack of trying.  Morgan dutifully allowed me to tie, re-tie, tie again, and give it another tie until I couldn’t take it anymore.

But patience is a virtue and trust is more easily lost than gained, so we tossed away the thread and had some ice cream sandwiches. I was secretly hoping she’d bite down hard and that tooth would come flying out.  Or maybe, while she was brushing her teeth before bed, I’d hear a surprised shriek and the pounding of footsteps on the stairs, “It’s out! It’s out!” Alas, they’re just up there screeching and running around naked like extras from “Lord of the Flies“.

These Sacajawea dollars are burning a hole in my pocket!

I wonder how Morgan would feel about corn-on-the-cob for breakfast.