So, after my recent post on the fact that I offed the Tooth Fairy not that long ago, one of my Twitterfolk inquired about the birthday fairy I mentioned in passing in that post. I figure that’s my in to have another topic for posting, right? Y’all care about our little family traditions, right? You wanna hear about this, right?

Sit down! Those were rhetorical questions. I took out the Tooth Fairy. I took out the Leprechaun. You better take a lesson from them and not get on my bad side.

*ahem*

Anyway, I’m not sure exactly how it all came about, but a few years ago, we introduced the concept of the birthday fairy. We were doing a lot of the fairy-house-building kind of thing and my little household goddess was (at the time) more into the fairy thing than the Barbie thing, so it seemed natural. She’d already heard of the Tooth Fairy, though I don’t think she’d lost any teeth at that time yet. She knew about Santa and the Easter Bunny. And to me, it seemed like birthdays got the short end of the magic stick.

Also, we had these pretty stalks growing in our side yard in a near-perfect circle maybe 18 inches in diameter. They got up to a couple feet high and in the summer, when our little goddess has her birthday, they would have these pretty, white, bell-shaped little flowers growing on the top third or so of the stalk. We came to think of that as our home’s fairy ring, and one year the birthday fairy started leaving a modest gift each birthday in that ring for our daughter to find.

The fairy ring is gone now, a victim of overeager landscapers we had doing some yard work, but the tradition persists. At one point, I felt the need to create a history for the whole birthday fairy thing and even gave her a name, which is my wife’s full first name backwards. This is what I came up with and printed out for my girl so she could have some kind of tangible record of her birthday fairy (and I included a picture of a fairy…with skin roughly as brown as my daughter’s own…can’t have just Caucasian fairies now…):

Akimahs

Birthday Fairy

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Akimahs is the birthday fairy for all children born on the day of your birth.

(Each day has its own fairy)

She is responsible for remembering everyone who has a birthday that day, and in special cases, when a child is really deserving, she will give one or more gifts to that child.

_____________________________________________

So, feel free to create your own birthday fairy traditions. After all, I’ve established that each day of the year has its own fairy, and there are 364 slots left open; I won’t sue you or charge you royalties for using my fantastic idea (unless you’re Hallmark. If they steal this idea, I will *ruin* them). I bet the fairy for February 29 is some lazy, drunken lout, since he or she only has to work every four years…