milk duds — Write — the jeri cerutti

The continuing saga of opposites attracting and

someone being lax in his due diligence.

If someone had asked me, I would have told them that dark chocolate covered caramels were the key to my heart.

There must have been a second set of keys, because for years my husband gifted me with cashew clusters. Milk chocolate, even. Eww.

Young and in love, I appreciated the gesture so much that it took awhile for me to tell him that he was doing it wrong. That he was the only one eating them and that they lasted forEVER were apparently insufficient clues.

The truth is, he wasn’t a candy guy and he married a woman born with a full set of sweet teeth. Although I don’t have all of them now, of course. There is natural fall out from a steady diet of Milk Duds and Tootsie Rolls. Sure, you can fill in the holes, but recently I’ve found that even modern dental technology is not proof against candy. Or corn chips, for that matter.

In the ‘60s, dental technology was rudimentary. We didn’t have molar sealants and theme park pediatric dental centers. The fight against tooth decay consisted of annual school presentations wherein a dental hygienist passed out “disclosing” tablets to show us where we were missing with the brush. Then we walked around with pink teeth for the rest of the day.

My mom was making ends meet by the skin of her teeth, and that did not cover regular check-ups for my sister’s and mine. Maybe I blocked more of them out, but I remember only one visit to the dentist before I was eleven. If you’ve seen the movie Marathon Man, trust me when I tell you that the scene with Szell asking Dustin Hoffman’s character, “Iz it safe?!” was culled from my repressed memories. Asking me if it’s safe will trigger my PTSD from drilling with no novocaine, which must have cost extra.

Dental care became regular when I was eleven and my mom remarried. Our two-parent, two-income household included dental insurance and for a few years dental care was so regular as to be weekly. We’d leave our six-month cleaning and check up with a schedule of weekly appointments to address the years of neglect.

Okay, so I have a sweet tooth, but I also came from questionable dental stock. As legend has it, my dad took my mom out for pizza on their first date. My dad picked up a slice and bit in. My mother followed suit – and blistered the roof of her mouth, unaware that my dad had a full set of dentures shielding his own. Apparently the Air Force had a scorched earth policy on tooth decay, hence my dad’s fake choppers by the time he was twenty. My mother had her own dental issues, so we kids were doomed from the start.

Maybe my husband bought me candy I didn’t like thinking it would save on dental bills. If so, it didn’t work. The first year we were married I had to have a tooth pulled and a bridge made. In the years since, I’ve had root canals done in four states, implants, replants, gum surgery and veneers. We’ve put at least seven kids through college. Three of them belonged to our family dentist. My husband has good teeth and has always taken care of them. My issues made us super conscientious about our kids having regular check-ups, fluoride treatments, sealants and of course, braces.

Sure, they lost teeth in the normal course of events - and were fairly reimbursed by the Tooth Fairy. One of them, perhaps understanding at a tender age that medical school was expensive, left her tooth with a request for twenty bucks. And damned if the guy on duty, captivated by her moxie, didn’t drop a twenty spot under her pillow. Never send a man to do a Tooth Fairy’s job. Her next tooth was accompanied by a request for $100.

Once, my younger son really lost a tooth, swallowing it along with the tender kernels from the ear of corn he was eating. Rather than wait for it to…reappear to collect his cash, I encouraged him to write a note to the Tooth Fairy, explaining the situation. It was a precious note, embellished with serifs and flourishes, evidence of his burgeoning creativity underscoring his toothless plea. The Tooth Fairy, an eminently empathetic sprite, left the cash and kept the note.

Beyond the natural attrition there were typical orthodontic issues, but overall they’ve been fortunate to inherit strong teeth from their dad. At least one of the four has never had a cavity, despite also inheriting at least one of my sweet teeth.

They do all like their candy.

Still, it came as a surprise the day I overheard my younger son telling a friend that the Tooth Fairy had left him a bag of M&Ms. Seriously?!

I called him aside.

“Jason Charles Cerutti,” I said,

“The Tooth Fairy most certainly did NOT leave a bag of M&Ms under your pillow.”

Beyond creativity and a sweet tooth, this one also inherited a tendency to sink his teeth into things. Rest assured that the Tooth Fairy did not leave a bag of M&Ms under this kid’s pillow. I’ll spare you the several minutes of “did, toos” and “did, nots” and wave my wand on over to the part where he said,

“How do you know?”

I marched him up the stairs, opened my box of keepsakes, pulled out a folded scrap of paper and handed it to him.

He read…

*“Dear tooth*
*fareiy i was*
*EatiNG My*
*CORN oN The*
*COBB AND I*
*took A Bite*
*AND I SWOLOD*
*MY tooth”*

He stared at the note. Then, looking up at me, eyes wide with wonder, said,

“You’re the Tooth Fairy?!”

Okay, not like I’d just outed Santa, but like…he thought I was the Tooth Fairy.

I hoped for a second that I could get him to believe that I also really did have eyes in the back of my head, but the moment passed.

It was one of those “best of times, worst of times” moments in parenting. For one shining moment I experienced the wonder of my boy thinking I was truly magical, followed quickly by the realization that in being right, I had stomped all over that childhood innocence. I choose to treasure the shining moment. And I think he’s forgiven me.

I conspiratorially shared that story with my oldest granddaughter, Morgan, last fall after she explained to me that she knew what was what with Santa Claus. I thought of it again last week when I was FaceTiming with her and her siblings. I was angling my face to the camera to hide the gap in my teeth - left by the loss of a veneer on a corn chip the day before. I showed them the loose veneer, stowed in a ziploc bag to bring to the dentist, and told them I was going to put it under my pillow for the Tooth Fairy.

I thought of it yet again a few days later when the crown on one of my implants came out while I was eating some Mike & Ikes.

On the bright side, we found a wonderful new dentist shortly after moving here.

Looks like I’m about to put her kids through college.

Maybe I am the Tooth Fairy, after all.