My very dear oldest granddaughter – she is six and a half- was staying in my house when one of her milk teeth came out. It’s the third one she has lost, and she knows the routine: she leaves the tooth under her pillow, and in the morning the tooth has gone and the tooth fairy has left a pound coin in its place.
‘Is it really a fairy that comes,’ she asked me before she went to bed, ‘or is it grownups?’
I said, ‘Do you really want to know that, or would it spoil the fun if I told you?’
She said, ‘No, it wouldn’t. It’s fun if it’s the tooth fairy, and it’s fun if it’s grownups. I don’t mind.’
Incredible to think that this small person, who, less than seven years ago, wasn’t even born, can already think in such a nuanced way. But human beings are like that!
I said, ‘Okay, so you want me to be honest with you?’
She said yes, so I told her the truth. She nodded. She’s a clever kid who thinks deeply about things. She must have already known that this isn’t the kind of the world in which things like tooth fairies naturally fit.
Next day, she found the coin and told us excitedly that the tooth fairy had come in the night.
What an intricate thing belief is. A friend of mine asked the vicar in his local church if he really believed in the things that religion says are real. The vicar answered him with surprising honesty, ‘Well, I try to live my life as if they were real.’
