It was one of those moments that you dread as a parent, I had been entrusted to keep a tradition alive and I was failing miserably. It was a few years back and my son Jacob had lost a tooth.  It was my responsibility to find a dollar coin to leave under his pillow.  The only problem was that he lost the tooth right before bedtime and I could not find a single Sacagawea gold dollar around the house.  I could not even locate one of those ugly random presidential gold dollars.  Not even a lousy Rutherford B. Hayes or James K. Polk.  Nothing.

Worried about my failings, as a parent and a Tooth Fairy, I headed out in the car. Of course, no banks were open and every store I entered had no such coins on hand.  As I pulled into the garage, I was out of luck.  Head down and shoulders slumped, only one option remained:  my boxes.  I have some infamous boxes (six or so copy paper size boxes) that have followed Charlene and I around from state-to-state and move-to-move.  They contain random goodies ranging from baseball cards to newspapers from the day that the boys were born.  Once, they even contained random Lawrence Journal World (Lawrence, Kansas) newspapers that were a few years old and at one time intended to read.  Of course, a random newspaper from a few years ago does not hold much value or purpose, so after being mocked by my spouse (deservedly so) they were recycled.  Somehow, these boxes seem to refill themselves and always contain a random assortment of life’s treasures.  These dreaded boxes were my final hope, because I seemed to remember a coin in one of them.

Searching through items such as old baseball score cards and a few college notebooks that contained excellent freehand doodles of Jayhawks, I found it. An Eisenhower Silver Dollar coin tucked in a small manila envelope.  On the envelope, my grandfather, now long since passed away, had written a note, “For David, 1972 dollar coin.”  He had given it to me, when I was young, as a payment for some chore and now it was my ticket out of trouble.  Across time, my grandfather had given me one final gift, the coin so desperately needed by me as a father.  Exchanging the tooth under the pillow, which was under my son’s surprisingly heavy head, for the coin, somehow I had found an appropriate final destination for the dollar, much better than a few more years sitting in a box.

So tonight, as my middle son Sam lost a tooth, I knew right where to head. Over the last year, since my father’s death, my mom has been working to tidy up some of his things.  Among the items were some coins my dad had collected and they now within my boxes.  Looking at the coins, I found the perfect one.  A lone Susan B. Anthony dollar.  Not mint, but still shiny.  A coin a young boy would be happy to stash away in his secret place of treasures.  As I tucked the coin under Sam’s pillow, I smiled.  Once again, I was blessed to share a moment.  A moment with a sleeping son, who would receive a gift from another kind man that we love and miss.  It is within those ethereal thoughts where we are connected with people we love regardless of distance or time.  Thoughts that make a Tooth Fairy smile.