Lisa Murray Columnist

  Brady lost his first tooth when he was three. I had noticed a few weeks before that it was starting to discolor, but pushed it to the back on my mind. We were dealing with so much already just getting him to talk. A few days before it fell out I noticed it was wiggly and called in Justin to confirm the wiggle. Then one afternoon sweet little Brady came up to me gesturing to his mouth and I assumed he was either hungry or thirsty. He grew more insistent after a drink and snack and it was then that I realized that his little-bitty front tooth had gone AWOL. So where was the tooth? I was convinced that Brady had swallowed the tooth and even had the pleasure of searching one dirty diaper. (Another perk of being a parent.) No tooth though. I threw the diaper away, scrubbed my hands even though they never came in contact with diaper matter (I wore gloves and used plastic cutlery), walked into the living room and found the tooth sitting on a blanket that I must have crossed paths with a million times waiting on Brady to poop out a tooth. 

  The second front tooth came a few months later while we were visiting Nana in Kentucky. This one was a fighter. The little guy was barely hanging on, but had a kung-fu grip in the gum line. I know this might not bode well for my future career choice as a nurse, but I get a little grossed out at the idea of pulling teeth. In our house that is a “Daddy job,” along with things like taking out the trash, lawn maintenance, and bug killing. I’m really proud of women’s rights and equality, but there are some things I’d rather not do. So Justin, after some convincing and bribery, was able to snatch tooth two. It wasn’t until after the tooth was out that we realized that we somehow had no dollars on us. That’s the going rate in our house for teeth, one dollar. That was what we got as kids and it was good enough for us. Actually in our house the tooth loser got one dollar and the non-tooth loser scored fifty cents. All was fair in the game of teeth losing.  Justin suggested a king size Snickers bar from Nana’s candy stash. That got vetoed. If memory serves, I think we were able to scrape up some change telling ourselves that Brady was too young to even remember and it wasn’t as if he would know how much money was there anyway.

  Now, almost five years later those long awaited front teeth are about to make an appearance. Brady’s dentist reassured us with x-rays that he did indeed possess permanent front teeth waiting to descend. We were starting to wonder. He started losing his other teeth, on time, in kindergarten. Within a short time permanent teeth took their place in his mouth, but those first voids stayed conspicuously empty. Brady pulled a tooth on his own last night and I fear his poor little brother walked away traumatized. We sat on the bed in the aftermath of the extraction while Brady held a bloody tissue to his mouth and poor Seth sat looking a little shell shocked at the site of the red stained tissue and declared that he was never going to lose his baby teeth. Brady, in a moment of big brotherly love said, “it’s okay Sethy, then your big boy teeth will grow in!” Seth didn’t look too convinced. I was just glad I actually had a dollar bill on me, which Brady pronounced “minty fresh” the following morning. I explained it was because the Tooth Fairy smells like toothpaste. I just hope he won’t put two and two together and conclude that it is the same smell as the gum in my purse.

   Now if I can just figure out what to do with my growing collection of little pearly whites. I think I’ll eventually throw them away, but right now they’ll rattle around in an old pill container until I feel ready to let go of the boy’s babyhood. Probably about the time they graduate college and long after they’ve realized that the Tooth Fairy isn’t real.

  Lisa Murray is a life-long Henry Countian, lives in McDonough with her little family and can’t imagine a better place to raise her boys.