I simply wouldn’t believe in St. Nick, but I was completely on board for the tooth fairy. I even thought I’d seen her. She wore a pink tutu and carried a sparkly wand.

Like somehow, a jolly fellow delivering presents to kids made less sense than a fairy paying for your unwanted teeth. I guess I figured at least there was something in it for her, even if I couldn’t figure out why she’d want teeth.

I received $5 for my first lost tooth, which was not only a lot of money in the mid-70s, but it was all in DIMES.

I had a quirky thing for 10-cent coins. My grandfather was a coin collector and had given me a small mechanical device that banks used to counted dimes, and it was one of my most beloved possessions. I would insert one coin at a time, and a spring would move it up the cylinder until I had the full fifty for a $5 roll. I was fascinated.

(When I was a bit older I was assigned to write a story about an inanimate object – of course I wrote about the life of a dime.)

It was absolute magic to me that the tooth fairy knew how much I loved dimes.

It took some of the sting out of how I’d lost that tooth, too. Sure, it was loose, but let’s just say that my mouth had some encouragement to shed that tooth that day. My father had a say in the matter.

It all depends on my mood what part of the memory I first recall. Today it was the dimes – I was thinking about tomorrow being National Tooth Fairy Day, and how giddy I’d been at the discovery of a baggie full of dimes under my pillow. I needed magic in my life. I needed to believe in something good. I needed her sparkly magic wand and her full-toothed smile.

The tooth fairy loved me.

One of the strangest parts about being a survivor of childhood abuse is that I have these memories of being happy. It’s not like every single moment was miserable. There are times when I was laughing and twirling around with joy.

How can I fit those memories in with the utter darkness that I also remember?

It is hard not to feel shame when I remember the joy. Like, how could a few coins make me happy when violence was a daily occurrence in my home? It’s like I was only supposed to suffer, and feel guilty that I sometimes didn’t. I’m somehow dishonoring the pain I went through when I remember those times of excitement.

I don’t have all the answers about this yet – it’s something I’m just starting to process. But there is one thing I do know – that my little girl delighted in many things – in dimes, but also in books, in drawing, in writing stories, making her own word searches, playing basketball, climbing trees, picking blackberries, and eating carrots fresh from the garden. She had so many things she enjoyed, and there’s healing in honoring those memories as well.

Joy is a birthright, for all of us.