A final visit from her tooth fairy...

Children have 20 baby teeth. I know this now, tho I hadn't really thought about it until a wee toothfairy began visiting five years ago.

My big girl and I read a story way back when that first little tooth wiggled out. The story was by Shirley Barber, the pictures were beautiful. The story was ok but what I love is that it planted a seed that baby teeth become stars. From there our own story emerged.

I think money for teeth is meaningless. At least for my own child, who when her teeth started to fall and new ones bud was only 6. Instead her fairy left her little beads she could thread onto a bracelet, each bead came with a sprinkling of pink fairy 'dust'. (How cute was she?)

She started to write little letters and her fairy wrote back. Their friendship grew and the big girl asked questions like how the beads were made and how she got the gems for them, what happens to the teeth, why she was sometimes late....

 

Just so you know, Gnomes make the pretty beads that grace her bracelet and they live deep under the ground among the roots where they dig for gems. A few years ago I got a little fairy door to sit at the trunk of the tree her aunt painted on her wall– to make it safe for her fairy to get in and out, stay out of the rain (because fairies cannot fly with wet wings) and also so she could avoid the cats in our house.

 

Teeth seemed to fall in pairs or clusters with sometimes long stretches of months between fairy visits. A few months ago the last lonely one wobbled its way out, a little note was written and she waited.... Pandora (her fairy) visited one night and left a little note asking her to be patient, she had not been forgotten but she needed more time.

Five years of creative story telling wove a beautiful blanket of joy around me and my girl. Her bracelet was full to bursting with 19 beads and no room for one more.

Lindy Longhurst is a localish artist, her imagery is full of colour and whimsy; perfect for a fairy tale. Pandora visited Lindy and together they created a final gift for my big girl in trade for her last tooth.

 

Lindy's attention to the details of our story is exquiste. Here is my big girl and her final tooth, on her wrist is her beaded tooth fairy bracelet. She is wrapped in the quilt I made her for her 10th birthday.

Here is Mia, her cat, who sleeps quite regularly on her quilt and is sitting patiently by the little fairy door. In the sky are 19 bright stars, one for each of her baby teeth Pandora has already collected.

This is Pandora flying in to collect the 20th tooth, trailing behind her is her magic pink fairy dust

and here are the gnomes, deep in the ground amongst the roots with the gems.

Thank you Lindy from the bottom of my silly, sentimental, fairy tale heart.

You can go meet Lindy in person, every Saturday & Wednesday she is at the Eumundi Markets on the Sunshine Coast. Failing that, visit her website Serpent Mandalas, her blog or like her on Facebook and best of all you can go shopping at her etsy shop!