WELL DONE! Flash Fiction DEAR TOOTH FAIRY by Celia Miles

DEAR TOOTH FAIRY by Celia Miles

To paraphrase a seventeenth metaphysical poet (can you tell I’m not your usual six-year-old correspondent?) some folks “a forward motion love, but I by backward steps would move…” into the realm, not of death, but dreams, dreams of you and Santa Claus, and Mama Nature, and all entities that create and foster the illusion of a forgiving and rational world.

Give me again the belief gleaned from wiser adults that if I am “good” (no definition required) and play by the rules, I will be rewarded. Bring me faith that if I follow a childlike path of cause and consequence, something positive will result. Give me the simple mindedness to think: If I behave thus and thus, long approved by moralists who ought to know, then surely such and such will occur.

In other words, dear tooth fairy, in case you’re losing my drift, renew my expectation that something, somebody, something out there sees what I do and pays attention. If I risk, let’s say, a tooth under my pillow, let me believe it’s worth the hope. It’s that faith in what’s unseen that prepares a child for the growing up; it’s not intellectual questioning that gets him or her ready. That comes, but its grandparent-predecessor is faith that step two follows step one.

So now, dear tooth fairy, from you I don’t need a dime or a dollar. What I need is the assurance that you’re there, you and all you represent. And for that I’d gladly leave you my teeth, capped and bridged as they are. After all, they can be replaced. But I’m not sure you can be.