Shortly after my son lost his first tooth, he began asking what the tooth fairy did with the teeth she collected. His kindergarten mind grappled with how the tooth fairy made the money that she left under children’s pillows at night. Since I had no ready answers, I let him ponder.

That Halloween, our dentist offered to collect Halloween candy for the tooth fairy. Each child who turned over his trick-or-treat loot could choose a toy from the dentist’s toy box. After my son reluctantly parted with his colorful assortment of fun-sized candy bars, he smiled knowingly. In the car, he announced that the tooth fairy must sell the Halloween candy and use the profit to fund her nighttime pursuits.

“But what does she do with the teeth?” he asked.

The truth is that the teeth, at least his teeth, sit in a little box on my dresser.

I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with the teeth after stealthily snatching them from beneath his pillow, so I stashed the first one in the box until a better idea came along. That was six years ago. The box filled with pairs of upper and lower incisors, bicuspids, and molars. And now that my son has just one more baby tooth to loose, the box will soon hold a complete set of baby teeth -- save the one my son swallowed in the car when he was six.

Other moms I know simply toss their children’s teeth in the trash. But I couldn’t dispose of them so causally.

The teeth serve as proof of my son’s steady growth, more tangible than a photograph.

Those bits of bone are physical evidence that the adolescent, who has the same size foot as me, was once just a little tike with a single toothed, jack-o-lantern grin. Like tiny pearls stringing together my son’s childhood, these relics represent the transition from a five-year-old’s steadfast belief in the tooth fairy to an eleven-year-old’s willingness to consciously suspend disbelief for the sake of his younger sister.

For now the teeth will stay put. I don’t anticipate turning them over to their rightful owner any time soon. And as for my seven-year-old daughter, I don’t have the same dilemma.

While she’s fascinated with the idea of the tooth fairy, she refuses to place her baby teeth under her pillow. Instead, she lovingly stores them in a box on her dresser, right where they belong.

By Tina Bournazos

Labels: childhood memories, dentist, money, Tina Bournazos, tooth fairy

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When it comes to board games, my family used to be fair-minded, good sports. On a rainy weekend afternoon, my eight-year-old daughter might cheer if her brother rolled a Yatzee. My twelve-year-old son might slip me a stack of pink bills when, almost broke, I landed on my husband’s Park Place. Meanwhile, my husband, the banker, pretends not to notice.

But then my daughter received Clue for Christmas, and everything changed.

As soon as we opened the box and held those tiny weapons in our hands, the mundane but menacing rope, the utilitarian yet dangerous lead pipe, the handy yet deadly wrench, a fiercely competitive pall descended over us, clouding our judgment, turning us into cut throat, board game Crime Scene Investigators.

Each of us devised a sophisticated method for tracking the clues in hopes of getting an edge on whether a distraught Miss Scarlet fired the fatal shot in the wood paneled library. My husband favors a spread sheet, my son a detailed list, and my daughter a bar graph. I stick to the official note pad that comes with the game augmenting it with a customized assortment of abbreviations and codes.

After each player’s turn, a moment of tense silence follows. Scribbling and the shielding of notes ensue, followed by glaring at one another. A single game leaves us all mentally exhausted, the losers grumpy and the winner smug.

Despite the intensity of each game, none of us were conscious of the pitch at which we played until one day my son returned from a friend’s house. At dinner, in an utterly surprised tone, he announced, “Today I found out that not everyone plays Clue like we do.”

I cringed inside with embarrassment. Our aggressive, over the top approach to what is supposed to be a friendly, family past time revealed itself. We were family game night frauds. But would my son recognize the clues and draw the obvious conclusion: despite appearances, other families are more stable, less manic and better adjusted when it comes to board games – and who knows what else?

Would this evidence lead him to suspect a broader truth about his parents -- that we don’t always behave well? Would our authority dissolve, his confidence in us shatter? Had we been found out? Was the jig finally up?

Rather than immediately confess, I listened to my son recount his afternoon. His friend suggested they play Clue, and my son asked for a spare sheet of paper to construct his suspect list. When his friend shrugged his shoulders, looked puzzled and asked why he wanted extra paper, my son demurred.

“I got the feeling that they just don’t play Clue at our level, so I skipped the paper,” he explained.

I breathed a sigh of relief at my son’s self restraint, reassured that we had at least set a good example in that regard, that all was not lost.

Then he added, with a gleam of family pride in his eye. “I won anyway.”

By Tina Bournazos

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Today is picture day at my seven-year-old daughter’s elementary school. Last night she asked me to set her fine, straight, golden streaked hair in pin curls. While I knew she had read about pin curls in her Molly, an American Girl: 1944 book -- 1944 being a golden age for pin curls ­­­-- I was still taken aback.

When I was a girl, every year when picture day rolled around, my mother insisted on setting my slack, black hair. One year it was pin curls, another year rag curls and another pink foam rollers. On the eve of picture day, I slept restlessly with bobby pins or roller holders sticking into my skull while wearing a nylon, floral print roller bonnet or worse, toilet paper wrapped around my head to protect my mother’s handiwork.

In the morning, I would watch in disbelief as she unwound springy curls which made my round face look even rounder. By the time I sat for my picture, the curls would have deflated, losing much of their bounce.

This was the ‘70s and my straight hair was actually in. Both Laurie Partridge and Marcia Brady had shiny, satiny smooth manes hanging from parts down the center of their heads.

Not me.

My mother, who had her hair teased and “put up” weekly at the Golden Strawberry Beauty Salon, forbade me from wearing my hair parted in the middle. She insisted it just wasn’t flattering -- in hindsight she was right. But with my unnatural, picture day curls, I felt like a fraud. I longed for a school picture that actually resembled the girl I looked like every other day of the year.

And now my daughter wants pin curls for her picture day!

I shouldn’t be surprised. She did request a Princess Leia like hairdo for her kindergarten picture. She even supplied me with printed instructions on how to achieve the style from a booklet that had come with one of her dolls. Not one to damper such enthusiasm, I complied. And after a couple of attempts at twisting up her hair into even buns on either side of her head, I had to admit -- she did look darling.

But pin curls are out of the question. I fear she will be startled in the morning by the transformation. We compromise and settle on a curling iron induced flip (parted on the side, of course) that will leave her looking much more like herself.

By Tina Bournazos

Labels: '70s, An American Girl: 1944, black hair, bobby pins, elementary school, hair parted in the middle, kindergarten, Molly, pin curls, pink rollers, Princess Leia, school picture day, Tina Bournazos

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Most people wait until spring to clean out the cupboards, but not me.

With Christmas looming, I feel the need to purge. Ever since we put up our Christmas tree, I have felt claustrophobic. Every time a package arrives on my doorstep, I feel edgy. Stashing gifts in the garage makes me tense.

I know that come Christmas Eve all the carefully wrapped presents will fit neatly under the tree, but their contents will expand upon opening, filling our living room, and eventually demanding to be absorbed into our home.

However, there is no room at the inn.

So instead of addressing Christmas cards and baking cookies, I prune the closets of clothes my children have outgrown, box up tinker toys and stuffed animals from Christmas past, edit my bookcases of titles I can spare, and recycle a year’s worth of "The New Yorker."

While my neighbors unload shopping bags from their trunks, I fill mine with things we no longer need: things we may never have needed.

As I cart our belongings to Goodwill, my mood brightens. I now have space to fill with Christmas.

By Tina Bournazos

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One item down near the end of my daughter’s Christmas list catches my eye. In her careful, loopy handwriting, she had printed, “a good suitcase.”

A good suitcase? Did she mean good as in Samsonite or good as in Louis Vuitton? I suppose she meant something better than the purple Hello Kitty roller bag she persistently asked for and received for her fourth birthday -- the now worn bag that she still methodically packs days in advance of any family car trip.

I’ve always thought of luggage as the appropriate gift for a high school graduate heading off to college, not a third grader who goes to an occasional slumber party. Therefore, I am inclined to dismiss the request as unnecessary if not outlandish. However, I decide to find out more.

My daughter explains that she wants something larger, well made, with lots of pockets. “I’m not going anywhere right now Mom, but I want to be prepared,” she says.

Despite her reasons, I am reluctant to indulge her.

I secretly admire her desire to be ready when adventure calls, but I am hesitant to outfit her for a journey. When she was three, she astonished me by confidently announcing, with hands on hips, that when she graduated from high school she will move to New York City. I couldn’t figure out where she had heard about high school let alone New York City, but I knew that there was prescience in her words.

She will eventually leave home, a day we will both have to prepare for.

But there will be no good suitcase under the tree this year. I’m not ready to make that purchase. The purple Hello Kitty roller bag will have to suffice for now.

By Tina Bournazos

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I am a recovering parent volunteer.

I held the position of room mom for grades Pre-K through fourth, organizing class parties and drivers for field trips.

I drove to destinations like the zoo, the fire department, the recycling center, and the pumpkin patch.

I served as the secretary, vice-president, and president of the home and school club of my children’s elementary school.

I sat on the Enrichment Committee, the Fundraising Committee, the Auction Committee, the Teacher Appreciation Luncheon Committee, and the Literature Committee.

I baked dozens of bare sugar cookies for decorating in the shape of shamrocks in March, butterflies in May, pumpkins in November, and snowmen in December.

I cruised craft stores for chenille stems (a.k.a. pipe cleaners), poster paint, sequins, florist wire, starch, pom-poms, and giggly eyes for craft projects. These projects included, but are not limited to, baby food jar snow globes, cheese cloth ghosts, macaroni necklaces, and rolled bees wax candles. I cut leaves, insect wings, petals, apples, stars and hearts out of construction paper, tissue paper, foam, and cardboard. I sorted, collated, corrected, hole-punched, stapled, folded, laced, and stuffed.

I dressed in the costume of a Greek village woman circa 1825 and taught my son’s fourth-grade class and my daughter’s first-grade class how to Greek circle dance. I dressed as a colonial settler (in a lavender, flannel nightgown, apron and mob cap) circa 1770 and instructed fifth graders how to make rope.

I coached Pee-Wee Soccer. I timed heats at swim meets. I decorated floats for the Little League parades. I worked in the school computer lab, art room, library, and lunch room. I sold gift wrap, daffodil bulbs, magazines, and See’s Candies to friends, neighbors, and family members.

I sold Rice Krispy treats, cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies and brownies at bake sales.

I have recently learned how to say, "NO."

By Tina Bournazos

Labels: Tina Bournazos

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