The day she was born was a whirlwind. I had wanted a child for so long. The pregnancy was rough but I was happy every day. Two weeks after her due date the doctor decided to induce. I had been addicted to A Baby Story on TLC during my pregnancy so I knew how the labor was to play out. I knew what it would look like and sound like. So when she finally came out and I did not hear a cry I knew my line: “Why isn’t she crying?” In an instant the nurse was next to me explaining that the room was about to fill with people. She did not lie. In the matter of a few seconds the room was filled with medical professionals, all with the goal of resuscitating my little blue baby. Another minute passed and I heard the melodious sound of her scream. They showed me her face and those huge blue eyes and whisked her away for tests and cleaning. It would be an hour before I got to hold and love my child. My first child.
Several days later we noticed that her face looked kind of smushed...birth trauma we thought, yet the shape of her head did not change in the following weeks. By the time she was two months old her oddly shaped head had a name, craniosynostosis, and we were scheduled for a major surgery to happen at her 6 month old mark. She was such a trooper. Through medicines and hospitalization for some early seizures to the series of surgeries she endured from infancy through 8 years old. Only recently has she started to fear the operating room, as she gets older and becomes more aware.
She has always been a sweet child. Kind to others and loving school and her friends. From about 3 years old she used to beg me for more school and more learning, we could never quench her hunger for knowledge. Raising her has been a complete dream. She is everything a mother could have hoped for. Her father and I were not such easy children and we often joked that there must have been a mix up at the hospital.
Since September it seems life has changed for us. In my daughter’s school 5th grade is considered upper school or middle school. She has moved to the upstairs classrooms and has a locker. All of the sudden as the school year began I noticed a change. She wakes up unhappy in the morning. She does not want to go to school. She does not want to do her homework...Middle school...
Having mothered this child for ten years I was at a complete loss. Who is this child? What happened to that happy go lucky girl? I asked her what was up and she began to sob that the girls are mean to her. They tell her she is immature, they tell her she is not smart enough to handle the rigors of middle school, they tell her she does not deserve the upper level locker she was given. She has nightmares that everyone is laughing at her...she fears that she is fat.
Overnight my happy go lucky little girl turned into an insecure and frightened pre-adolescent. I wanted to hold her, to protect her from the years...I wanted to keep her happy and young. We talked through her school work and the difficulty with her new peers. I assured her that she was no where in the vicinity of fat and that her beauty was blossoming every day. I reminded her that she is strong and smart and very loved.
It only took another day before the “I’m not talking to you” phase began...and in the past two days she has been “not talking” to me twice...I braced myself for the coming years as I approached her and laid out the guidelines for our upcoming battles. 1. She is not to run away from conversations. 2. We will speak to each other respectfully. and 3. No matter the argument I will always love her. She sobbed, and sobbed, and apologized. She was a little heap of hormonal and emotional child. She so wants to remain a child but those around her are growing and developing and changing. We held each other until we regained composure and went down for dinner.
I still tuck the children in and hope to do so until they are old and gray. My own grandmother tucked me in only a few months before she died. I was 37. I believe in the tucking in ritual. As I sat with her she fought back tears and told me her friends called her a baby because she still calls me Mommy. I smiled at her as I stroked her hair and shrugged, “I still call my mother Mommy.” I said. She smiled and then looked at me very solemnly:
“Mommy, I want you to tell me the truth. Do you promise you will tell me the truth?”
My breath caught in my chest as I pondered what was coming next but promised to tell her the truth.
She looked at me with her big blue eyes, rimmed red and filled with tears,
“Mommy, are you the tooth fairy?”
I hesitated for a moment, “How honest do you want me to be?” I asked her, silently pleading that she would move on to another question.
“Mommy, I want you to tell me the truth.”
“OK,” I replied slowly, “Yes, I am the tooth fairy. It is the best job I’ve ever had. I became the tooth fairy when you were born and even now that you know it is me, I will still be the tooth fairy until the very last baby tooth falls out of your beautiful head.”
She just looked at me for a while deciding how to process the information.
“I’m still going to believe in the tooth fairy, and if we weren’t Jewish I’d believe in Santa Claus too.”
In this place and time where she is both fighting to grow up and fighting to stay young I am so happy that she can hold on to her fairy’s and dreams and even happier that she will allow me to continue to be her tooth-fairy. I know the days of “I’m not talking to you” are going to increase in number and her interests and self esteem will continue to grow and take a beating but I will never stop looking into those blue eyes, the same ones that peered back at me as the nurse showed me my little wonder, and know that deep beyond the here and now we are connected souls and I will always be her tooth-fairy.
(Oh, and when she asks me if Hogwarts is real, I’m avoiding the question...)
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