We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things
Goethe

When we are children, fantasy is a comforting thing and as I was growing up, I retreated into that world often to escape from an unbending reality. When I was forced to take a nap, I would cover my head with a blanket and make up tales of worlds where mothers didn’t scream and you could eat all the ice cream you could hold. I wished upon every star and when I blew out the candles on my birthday cake, I sent up endless pleas for new puppies, picture books or permission to sleep at Marcia Zimmerman’s because her mother made blueberry waffles for breakfast.

It wasn’t until I was nine years old that my comforting fantasies were taken from me and I felt as wounded as if I had been shot. World War II had been raging for almost two years and we were learning to live with rationed gasoline, meatless Tuesdays and endless paper drives. Each time I lost a tooth, I would place it under my pillow, confident that the next morning, the tooth fairy would replace it with a dime to spend any way I pleased. When I was nine, I was losing molars and sometimes it was difficult to pull them without a twinge of pain. When my Mama tied a string around the tooth and pulled with all her might, I endured without a sound because I knew of the reward to come. You could buy a whole box of cracker jacks with a dime and get a special prize at the bottom of the box. You could purchase a yo-yo and even a double dip ice cream cone and you didn’t even have to ask permission.

The night after I had pulled out my first molar, I was awakened by a slight rustle at my bedroom door. When I opened my eyes, I saw Daddy rummaging under my pillow to replace my tooth with a coin. Copper had become so scarce that our government substituted aluminum in pennies that year and because the light was dim and my father was tired, I got one cent instead of ten. I discovered his error as soon as he left the room and I was inconsolable.

I came downstairs to breakfast the next morning, barely able to suppress my tears. I put the penny on the sink and said, “Why did you tell me the tooth fairy rewarded me for a lost tooth when you knew all along that it wasn’t true?”

My mother put her arm around my shoulder and made me sit down with her at the kitchen table. “It is people in this world who make magic things happen,” she explained. “And I am going to tell you about a lady you know who has done that very thing. Do you remember Aunt Bess Terman?”

I nodded and my mother told me about the many years my Aunt Bess had prayed and prayed for a child but never got one. By the time she and Uncle Max tried to adopt a baby, they were so old, that social service agencies wouldn’t consider their application. My Aunt Bess did volunteer work at a children’s hospital and one day she saw a little boy so malnourished he could barely move. He was being fed through tubes and one of the nurses pointed to the wasted child. “That youngster won’t last a month and there’s nothing really wrong with him. He was starved for days when the police found him crammed into the trunk of a car,” she explained. “But he is so frightened that he refuses to eat and screams all through the night.”

Aunt Bess walked over to this little boy’s bed and she put her hand on his head. As she stroked his bright curly hair she could feel the child quiver and she saw his eyes dart back and forth like a hunted animal. She picked him up, tubes and all and held him to her breast. “I’ll take him,” she said. “I’ll make him well.”

In those days, you could do a thing like that without signing endless papers. Within an hour, Aunt Bess became the temporary guardian of that little boy. She wrapped him in a blanket and brought him home. She named him Bernard.

In the beginning, she fed him with a spoon and an eyedropper and she stayed at his bedside all night so he would never awake to find himself alone. She listened to his nightmares and she comforted him. She walked him around the block as slowly as if they were both crippled and by the time I became aware of Bernie Terman, he was a skinny little boy who loved to laugh and play hop scotch with all of us on the block. “Bess did a magic thing,” said my mother. “She saved that little child with love alone. When your father came into your room last night, he was not letting you believe a lie. He was showing you that magic is the power real people have to make a better world.“

I pushed my spoon around my rice krispies and I swallowed very hard. “I suppose you’re going to tell me there is no magic elf in this cereal that goes snap, crackle and pop and no soap fairy to make Ivory float.”

My mother nodded. “It’s all in how you look at it,” she said. “A human being thought of a way to let your bath bar float in the tub and make your cereal dance for you. Those are the good fairies in a real world. Can you understand that?”

I nodded. “Yes, I can,” I said, “But what I can’t figure out is who owes me nine cents.”

The truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with
George Eliot