Riding home one afternoon, Babygirl expresses no shortage of concern that she does not own a green shirt. “Did you know? Did you know, Mommy? Mommy: there is something I have to tell you: on the Clover Day, the leprechauns will come and if you are not wearing green — LittleMan, I have to tell you — if you are not wearing green –” (in the rearview mirror I see her turn to her brother, trembling and grinning with gleeful horror) “– if you are not wearing green they will pinch you ON THE BUM!”
“No-oh! Uh-uh!” counters LittleMan. “My teacher told me that if you want to wear green on St. Patrick’s Day you can, but if you don’t want to that’s fine too, and leprechauns are really nice and they love all children.” (You have to love public school. Even leprechauns are treated carefully. And people who like to wear green. Or don’t.)
“No! No!” cries Babygirl, waving her hands. “Leprechauns are BAD! They steal your rainbow art and they will steal all of Daddy’s pennies if we don’t hide them!”
I interject: “You guys are usually the ones stealing daddy’s pennies.” Babygirl loves to tiptoe into our bedroom and raid the valet on my husband’s dresser for his loose change, which she then hides in her various purses. “And I think it’s fair to say that leprechauns are more naughty than bad. They just sometimes like to make mischief.”
“Yeah! They make mischief and they will steal the pennies and all of Daddy’s gold!” confirms Babygirl. As I park the car I laugh at the image of my husband sitting in our tiny apartment surrounded by bags of gold, dressed in velvet robes. To hear my daughter talk you would think we live on the set of Jack and the Beanstalk.
“Like his carwash tokens!” cries LittleMan. “The carwash tokens are the most golden coins of all! We have to be so careful!”
“We obviously need to warn Daddy,” I say.
“Family Meeting!” insists LittleMan.
“We can discuss it at dinner tonight.”
While this exchange is quite rather charming, I won’t lie: I’m getting a little irritated with St. Patrick’s Day becoming A Thing. As far as I’m concerned, St. Patrick’s Day belongs to two, distinct groups of which I am not a part: 1) the people of Ireland, and their relatives and descendants; and 2) young, childless people with a tolerance for food coloring in their beer. So the new trend in which leprechauns come to your house in the night and make little messes of mischief and leave treats is wearing on me. I mean, didn’t we just do the Valentine’s thing where LittleMan painstakingly personalized 22 Ninja Turtle cards and Babygirl ate at least 22 pieces of candy before breakfast and I twisted slabs of bacon into heart shapes per Pinterest? YES. Is the Easter Bunny not hippity-hopping towards us even as I type? YES.
I would like a break, please. I am going to raise my hand and ask for a pass on St. Patrick’s Day. You may join me. We’ll all toast our solidarity with a regular-colored adult beverage.
Funny enough, our home has been getting its fair share of midnight visitors this year. In addition to our old favorites, Santa and the Tooth Fairy (more on her later this month), we have also played host to the Switch Witch in the week after Halloween and the Paci Fairy just last month.
Who are these new magical home invaders, you might be wondering? Well, I am surprised you have to ask. After all, the trusty interweb informs us that the Switch Witch is “a magical Halloween tradition” (?!) who exchanges all that tooth-damaging candy for a harmless little Lego gift. The Paci Fairy is the similarly time-honored legend/method of how one magical woman got her child to release the paci from her fast-asleep-death-grip in just Seven Easy Steps. (FYI: This one also ends with a gift. And a Lego for the big brother. Just to keep the magic alive.)
You might recall our attempts to limit the paci way back in, oh, 2013. Those attempts failed. But in January my sister took my niece to the dentist and learned that the paci could cause untold damage to a child’s bite once teeth come in, and since Babygirl’s teeth came in some years ago we all sort of panicked and decided it was time. Or, as my sister put it, “No matter how cruel it feels now, it’s a lot less cruel than landing your daughter in a headgear for her entire Middle School career because of her bite issues.” Fair point.
I did my paci-extinguishing research, of course. I canvassed a few moms and learned variations on the Paci Fairy theme. While we were at ALT, my friend Sara and her sister Melissa from Alice and Lois regaled me with tales of printable books showing their daughters’ pacis tucked into the mouths of babies around the world (because the Paci Fairy takes pacis from Big Girls and brings them to all the New Babies in all the lands), and described decoupaged keepsake boxes for the Fairy to transport the pacis on their journey. “It wasn’t that bad,” they agreed. “The girls kind of had fun with it.” And this all sounded very magical until I realized Sara and Melissa are literally professional artists. I am a writer, so let’s be real here: I will not be decoupaging anything.
In the end (after I begged poor Sara to search no fewer than three hard drives for her printables), we played it low-key. Late one night, when my husband and I went to fish for Babygirl’s pacis in the folds of her blankets, we simply threw them away. Just. Like. That.
The Paci Fairy dutifully left some American Girl paraphernalia for Bitty Baby, and for the better part of the following day Babygirl didn’t know the difference. But she wept at bedtime. No wailing or begging: instead, silent, slow-rolling tears of grief which suggested a new, dignified resolve befitting her Big Girl status. It tore at my heart on so many levels, largely in that it was done: the last vestige of my daughter’s babyhood, spirited away in the night.
Infancy is over in the blink of eye. Babyhood is ill-defined and fleeting despite our (occasional) best efforts to prolong it. Childhood can — and should — be extended as long as possible. But it will also fade into memory. The magic will eventually give way to Truth, which is often far less interesting.
What would you choose, if you didn’t have to know better? The Fairy, or the trash bin?
The Fairy, the Fairy, of course, of course. And so with St. Patrick’s Day approaching we agree that the car wash tokens are made of gold. We will soon find my husband’s cufflinks and an especially shiny bike-lock key tucked away in the Tupperware drawer, where they are (presumably) safe from the leprechauns, and we will let them live there, for now. We put green food coloring in the Kraft mac, and when the children awake and have yet to don their green shirts we will pinch them on the bums, just to hear them laugh and see them run. One more year. And another and another, until the magic fades.
‘Tis the least we can do.
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