Recently, my daughter asked me about the reality of leprechauns. Such moments are parental ingenuity tests, and there have been times I’ve made the grade, but on this impish occasion, I flunked.
Before my girls were born, I had multiple cerebral workouts in exploring questions that could arise in a Santa, Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy debate: How does St. Nick get down every chimney in one night? Do the Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny live at the North Pole, too? Will Santa eventually need a gastric bypass?
I thought I’d unraveled the mysteries, but parenting was easier before I became a father.
After the kids arrived and their conviction in myth was firm, I asked the more important questions: How long can children "believe" without psychological damage? When my daughters are keen to my fraudulent fables, will they be less inclined to trust their father who inadvertently taught lying is OK? What of leprechauns? (In my preparations to be the perfect father, I’d neglected this enigma, my ethnocentrism apparent as I'd presumed they were solely the luck of the Irish).
Her question, asked casually as she washed her face and I shaved mine, was innocuous enough:
“Dad, are leprechauns real?”
Logic told me leprechauns are related to fairies, however, the only apparent difference being facial hair and a proclivity for emerald knickers.
Fairies, whether of the J.M. Barrie variety or those collecting incisors, are real. Everyone knows that anytime a child says, "I don't believe in fairies," there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.
Undoubtedly, this supernatural law applies to adult declarations, too. I wasn't going to have pixie blood on my hands. I knew my daughter would believe me over her peers, despite ridicule over a belief in pint-sized men who frolic in shamrocks.
On March 7, 2005, I told her fairies exist as my journal avows:
"Today we were at the doctor’s office and ... I noticed the sunlight refracting off the face of my watch onto the wall. I twitched my arm, and (my daughters) excitedly pointed it out … saying, 'What is it? It looks like a fairy!' I told (them)… it was the doctor office fairy who helps sick children feel happy. This seemed like an acceptable answer to (them), and we continued in the fun of chasing ... The rest of the day, anytime (they have) seen reflected light, (they've) announced the fairy is back."
What kind of father sets this precedent and pulls the rug out from underneath his trusting children? Certainly the dad who pulled apart the bathroom sink to retrieve a lost canine so the Tooth Fairy could deliver wouldn't retract. The father who says he believes in Santa regardless of what others think must not betray the art of storytelling — the magic of childhood.
My response needed to be epic.
“Dad, are leprechauns real?”
“I don’t think so, sweetie.”
So much for my magnum opus.
“Oh, because I really wanted to believe in them.”
My heart, in tandem with a fairy’s somewhere in Neverland, broke.
It’s been a few days since the tragedy, and fortunately, my child shows no symptoms of hardened cynicism.
Meanwhile, I'm working toward a catharsis and plotting my strategy for the next ingenuity exam, which will probably involve questions about the correlation between pixie dust and a reindeer's ability to fly. Perhaps she will even inquire about the validity of the Tooth Fairy that I have prepared for by practicing (with various voice inflections) the phrase: “What would you like to believe?” I am anticipating that she will follow up with a query of my belief, to which I will warmly reply:
“I do believe in fairies. I do. I do.”
David Young is a stay-at-home dad who is certain he hears reindeer hooves on his roof every Christmas Eve. When not searching for pixies in wooded glens or adjusting his pirate eye-patch, he writes about his adventures at www.davidymusic.com/blog/