My Loose Tooth

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“Right. This is the plan. This string goes on my tooth and the other end on…”

My seven-year-old daughter is a masochist with a cause. She wants cash and she’s got a plan on how to get it. First, she needs a piece of string. Then a brave soul to lend a hand. She’s going to tie the string to her loose baby tooth and the other end to a doorknob. Then she will brace herself against the kitchen table while the brave soul – her five-year-old brother has offered a hand, happily – slams the door shut. Out pops the tooth and in pops money from the Tooth Fairy. Cha ching!

She tells me she’s identified three or four baby teeth for the scheme and that she has a backup if anything fails, like if her brother chickens out or the doorknob comes off instead. This backup is a one-person method that involves using a pair of pliers to get a good grip on the tooth and pulling hard. Very hard.

I am already grinding my teeth at the thought.

Out Sick

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“Yeah, I’m feeling kind of hot. And check out this rash…”

Parents don’t get sick, kids do. I don’t remember my mum and dad staying in bed when we were kids. They had to make breakfast, lunch and dinner and the snacks in between for the five of us. They had to help with homework and do all those things parents do: make our beds, wash and iron the clothes, pick up after us and scrub behind our ears and clip our fingernails. We’d get sick with every kind of flu, and we’d get sick with even more kinds of stomach bugs, especially those that kept you home on exam day. I got those all the time.

My kids get sick, sometimes all three at once. We take care of them. We drive them to the doctor’s office or the hospital. We buy them medicine and let them chill out in front of the TV, plying them with hot soup, water and timely dosages of medicine. I know the ins and outs of the hospital we frequent the most. You just have to give the receptionist our kids’ dates of birth and the computer system pulls up all their data. I buy them a chocolate as a treat or a juice and it’s off home to recover.

Then the unexpected happened. I got sick.

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A Magical Christmas

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“I want a magic set and a box to saw people in half.”

It’s not long until Christmas and my eldest daughter is telling me what she wants from Santa Claus.

“I want a magic set,” the seven-year-old says after finishing breakfast.

“That’s good,” I say.

“And a magician’s hat.”

“Wow, yeah. That’d be cool.”

“It’ll be a big hat, not one for rabbits. I’ll be able to put people in it and make them disappear.”

“My!”

“And I want a box so I can saw people in half,” she says.

“Wow!”

“And a magic pen.”

“Oh, you mean one that writes in invisible ink.”

“No,” she says, looking at me as if I’m thick. “It will write in the same ink as my fountain pen for school. It will be magic because it will do my homework for me. It will write it all out for me. I will put my homework down on the table and the pen will do it for me like magic. And I will ask for a robot, too. A robot that’s my size and looks like me and can make my bed and pick up all the toys.”

“Wow, Santa’s sure got his work cut out for him,” I say.

But she’s not listening. She’s got more on her list. “I want a pair of trainers, you know, the ones with wheels on the bottom so I can glide around.” She does a demonstration for me on the kitchen floor like she’s roller-skating.

“I think Santa can handle that,” I say optimistically.

But these aren’t just shoes for gliding, she tells me. “They’ve got wings that pop out so I’ll be able to fly just like Santa and his reindeer.”

This certainly is going to be a magical Christmas.