Thursday, January 13, 2011

On being 7

For the last two days, Elijah has been wiggling this loose tooth, hoping it would fall out. Last night, I tried to twist it for him; but I just wasn't up to the task.

As we witnessed the first droplets of blood, I thought it was time. "If you keep wiggling it, it will come out." He did. And I was so proud that he was persistent, he was determined and was not afraid of the blood, was not afraid of hurting himself. I love these things about this little boy, in addition to the way his imagination works. He was seven! His new independence had come in full force..just like his two year old brother who insists on feeding himself, despite how little makes it to his mouth or pushes himself out of the chair and onto the floor when he is unable to assert and be rewarded for his new independence.

The parallels between these two ages is remarkable.

My seven year old's mind went to work explaining how his classmates wanted to know if the tooth fairy would come and how much money he would get.

Elijah took a trip into the recesses of his imagination and then detoured into logic-ville with his desire for rationale explanations he questioned the existence of fairies. (This same child insisted that Santa Claus was real when I told him Santa didn't exist. This child told me to listen to the Christmas songs and that proved Santa was real) He got to thinking and talking, "I wonder when will the tooth fairy come? midnight? How does she get the money to give me? Does she turn into someone and then go to the bank to get the money and then turn back into herself? Does she buy the money? I bet her house is made of tooths, I mean teeth. I think her doorknob is one big tooth... I'm going to wake up early in the morning to see what I got."

I let him call his grandmother and she fueled his excitement by saying maybe the tooth fairy would give him a lot of money since he pulled the tooth out himself. She seemed to forget our most recent conversation about the energy bill.

I snatched a single from Elijah's birthday money that I had put away for him to spend in February and slid it under his pillow. He spoke unintelligibly as I lifted his head and felt for the Ziplock baggie.

I rubbed some ointment on his itchy skin, kissed him good night and felt blessed.

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