Fairies, or: Favors

On Friday, our six-year-old lost her 7^th and 8^th baby teeth within the span of a few hours. The first had been noticeably wobbling so we weren’t surprised at the event when she bit down into a crunchy cookie, but the second one came out unexpectedly, while we were having Shabbat dinner. We were both shocked when our daughter suddenly exclaimed, “Another tooth just fell out! Does that mean the tooth fairy will give me two presents?”

After the excitement had died down, she followed up by asking us the classic children’s question about the existence of the tooth fairy. She’s no dummy, and she’d heard some of her preschool classmates, as well as one of her teachers from last year, speaking about the tooth fairy as nothing more than mere fantasy. Now, personally, I’m not one to encourage anyone’s belief in fictional characters of any sort; but my wife likes the idea of encouraging a child’s sense of wonder and expresses disappointment whenever I suggest the possibility of their non-existence. That’s why I carefully stayed quiet. “I don’t know much about the tooth fairy,” I said, “You’ll have to ask Mama’chka. She knows more about it.”

Cleverly, my wife managed to circumvent the question with a discussion of whether or not a child should receive two gifts for two teeth that fall out on the same day, and our daughter forgot about her question. On Shabbat morning, after waking up during the night in excitement and anticipation to check for favors beneath her pillow, our little girl awoke early to find two separate little gifts waiting for her – and neither of the two teeth she’d lost.

Fallen leaf headrest
Shifted gingerly by fae
Reveals dawning joy

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The above is my second attempt at a classic haibun (here is my first one), which includes a traditional haiku, entailing the following:

• A haibun includes 1 to 3 prose paragraphs that must be a true accounting, not fiction,
  followed by a traditional haiku which MUST:
  • be nature based
  • be three lines (5 – 7 – 5 syllables OR short-long-short)
  • have a direct or subtle relationship to your prose paragraphs: enrich the prose without condensing or summarizing it
  • include a KIGO (word or phrase associated with a particular season).
  • although only 3 lines in length, it must have two parts including a shift, an added insight. Japanese poets include a KIREJI (cutting word).
    • BUT there’s no linguistic equivalent in the English language therefore punctuation creates the cut: we can use a dash, comma, an ellipsis, an exclamation point. Sometimes it’s simply felt in the pacing or reading.