I know I keep writing about teeth! How weird, as if I have a thing for teeth, some latent dentistry dream or I don’t know, teeth are weird. I picture those terrifying (sorry, we’re not supposed to say that about someone’s else’s food) guinea pigs on the fire spit, roasting on a rotisserie in Peru and all that is left of their pet-ness is those dang horrible buck teeth!

Well, I love my daughter, and she has lovely lovely teeth, but it’s just strange the way they keep coming up (dental pun). She has lost a total of three teeth and we have no teeth here in a case or bag or whatever to speak of. The first was accidentally eaten. The second was accidentally thrown away. The third got accidentally cleaned up by the cleaning woman who comes every Thursday. I have put more hours and mental energy into finding these teeth than I would a lost puppy. (Okay, obviously not true).

But a few days ago, wrecked from the accidental throwing away from being bandaged up with wads of toilet paper like a tooth mummy, I went a bit nuts. My son had just chucked his sister’s newly lost tooth across the room in a moment of anger. I hunted that dang tooth down, finally spotting it in the fruit bowl next to bananas.

The girl with the gaping hole was still so jarred through the tooth-somewhere-in- bags-of-garbage incident that she wrote ALL OVER a double seal, non-generic fancy plastic bag that it was hers and that she would be so mad if anything happened to it. Well, she showed her grandma here, her Obaachan, and bless that sweet, beautiful woman, Baba held it in her hands, turning it over and marveling at that cute, tiny white thing. She really took her time, over and over, just stupified over the size and perfection of it, maybe. It is a bone. A tooth is the same calcium structure of a bone and we put it under a pillow and request something for it. A bone on the outside, inside of our body.

Well, that wonderful Baba of ours set it back down on the table and then…it was gone. Poof. Back on my hands and knees, mumbling and dismayed, back crawling under the lunch table for a white crumb that is really bone and should be washed and placed under the cool underside of her pillow like yesterday.

I pictured it caught up in Baba’s mustardy cowl-neck. I obsesseved over it. I pictured it stuck at the top of her sock for however long it could hold out on her walk and train ride home from our house. And then we all realized that probably, absolutely our cleaning woman must have swept it off of the dining room table and into a dust bin.

Sigh. It is fine. It is a dumb little bone, but it was my girl’s and I totally know the size and the shape.

The tooth fairy should resist, really, not leave a cent or a yen or any sweet, what with n’ery any teeth for her to see. Not from any of them. That woman (T.T.F.) is either a sucker or very bright; she stocked that underside of the pillow with three kinds of candy and a verbal note (nor written) that these candies were given to quicken the process of losing teeth—by rotting them out. 

The next tooth that comes out I may just lock in my own safe. (After I buy one). It’s easier that way.

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If not totally obvious, I think this growing up and out is just making an impression.

Here was another piece in Brain, Child–and o course, it’s about teeth. (It’s getting creepy, I know).

Doesn’t help that we are in love with Junie B. Jones’ voice and we are SAVORING this one book in the series where Junie loses her top tooth & is afraid she’ll look like toothless Uncle Lou.

Anyway, all of this is just preparing me for the day I need to take my girl out for a bra and face toner. No tooth fairy for the preteen negotiations, though there should be. High five.