Big day for my little boy.
After countless days of wiggling and pulling, Charlie finally lost his first tooth. He was brushing his teeth when, according to him, he felt something. “I stopped brushing, reached into my mouth, and it was my tooth!”
Damn was he excited. I was in the shower at the time, so he came running, crashed into the glass shower door, and said, “Dad! It happened!”
It’s a moment I will never forget.
Earlier that night, he stepped into his bedroom after our cleaning lady had tidied up and said, “Dad, my room looks spectacular.”
Even earlier that night, he stood before a 12-foot, inflatable, animatronic pumpkin headed monster on the front lawn of his Hebrew School and could not stop laughing, gasping, pointing, and uttering, “Oh my God.”
When saying goodbye to his friend, Helen, after an afternoon playdate, he hugged her and she hugged him, so instantly and easily and sweetly, that it made my heart melt.
While we were lying in his bed, lights out and blue stars projected on the ceiling, listening to Neko Case’s “I Wish I Were the Moon,” he whispered in response to a line in the song, “I hope she’s not so tired anymore.”
Lastly, as he placed his tooth under his pillow, he said to me, “I know you have to work at the hospital tomorrow, but don’t leave until you see what the tooth fairy gave me. I want you to know, too.”
So I sit here at the table, thinking about all that made yesterday so beautiful, recording these moments both here and in my Homework for Life so they will remain with me forever, waiting for that little boy to come racing down the stairs with a golden dollar and a note from Tooth Fairy congratulating him on his first lost tooth.
I hold onto these moments more than anything else in the world, because they are more valuable than anything else in the world. They are my treasure.
