The Wall

I had to do the tooth fairy thing and it wrecked me more than it should have. Or maybe exactly as much as it should have. Because it wasn’t about a tooth. It was about being the one who has to hold every layer of childhood together now. The magic, the logistics, the comfort, the follow-through, the memory keeping. All of it. Those are the moments where grief and pressure become the same thing. I’m not just mourning her. I’m constantly stepping into spaces she should still occupy. And every time I do, it feels both necessary and unfair. The kid doesn’t know any of that. The kid just knows a tooth is under a pillow and the world better keep its promises. So I handle it. Of course I handle it. Then I sit there afterward feeling ripped open by something as ridiculous and ordinary as a dollar under a pillow. Parenting after loss is death by a thousand tiny substitutions.