WHERE'S THE TOOTH FAIRY WHEN YOU NEED HER?

“I only have one baby tooth left,” Joe announced as he bit into a slice of pizza. His seven-year-old sister, Gracie, sat next to him. I had just commented on the disappearing gap where her former baby tooth had been summarily dismissed by a newly emerging permanent tooth. “Wow, your new tooth is coming in nicely!”

Gracie offered a pizza-faced smile, poking the tip of her tongue through the shrinking space of her faded infancy. I smiled back, a full gap of my deterioration revealing itself to her.

What had started last year as an innocent root canal ended up with my tooth being pulled. The first implant failed. The second one happened last month, leaving my face with a lovely variegated patina that lasted nearly three weeks. 

I don’t generally consider myself vain. I’ve had to have decades of discussion with myself to come to peace with the face in the mirror. Nonetheless, the missing tooth in the front of my mouth bothers me. Its probably the result of spending three years working with women in the jail who had lost their teeth to meth use. I smile the crooked smile of my own childhood, when that spot in my mouth carried a baby tooth until I was 16 years-old and surgery and braces pulled the adult tooth to replace it from the roof of my mouth. That was a hard-earned tooth, and now it’s gone. But I have well trained lips that know how to smile a crooked smile in public places. 

I have resorted to fasting and prayer that this most recent implant will hold. I need to be free to laugh unrestrained. Seriously, we all need that grace. (Someday I will outgrow myself)
Take care of that tooth, Gracie! A missing tooth in the mouth of a child is charming. Not so much on an old lady. Alas, such is my fate. 
Trying to replace this missing tooth is costing me a pound of flesh and thousands of dollars. Do you think the tooth fairy would be willing to leave that much under my pillow?