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| Horse stuff for Christmas. |
Last night, born from a small moment while getting the kids
ready for bedtime, my youngest asked a question that caught me COMPLETELY off
guard. I had purchased a drawer organizer for the bathroom earlier in the week
and we were in the process of sorting through the old lip balm tubes when we
found some baby teeth in a plastic container. Nora commented that the teeth
belonged to her sister. Then she looked at me and asked, “Are you the tooth
fairy.”
I answered “no” pretty quickly, but she must have read it as
a “yes” because, without pause, she
pressed into Santa territory. “And Santa’s not real either, right?” I think I
fumbled with something like, “Do you want him to be?” Over the last year, I’d
been curious more than once as to whether or not she still believed, but
somehow I knew this was the right moment to gently upend the myth.
While I didn’t diminish her act of discovery or the fact
that this was indeed a sad little moment, I tried to make it less heavy with a
hug and a story about my own discovery when I was about her age. I couldn’t
recall the details as much as my emotional connection to the unsettling news. I
asked her if she was disappointed to know the truth and she ultimately said
yes, at first brandishing her grade school bravado with some comments about how
ridiculous “all the magic” seemed.
I went to sleep feeling badly for Nora, feeling the weight
of her childhood loss. She’ll celebrate her 10th birthday in
February with the promise of a few horseback riding lessons in the spring, but
Christmas will never be the same.
