As a mother I field many questions during the course of an average day. Some very intelligent, some silly, some flat-out strange while others often come straight out of left field. I do my best to answer them all with detail, fact, and sometimes a little embellishment.
This morning started like normal, sleepy girls fumbling to get dressed, hair brushes working through tangled hair. What was different was the question that came next, “Mom, do you know where the toothpaste is?”. Nothing whitty came from my mouth. I stood looking at my eldest daughter who was at the top of the stairs looking back at myself. “No Megan, I would assume the toothpaste would be on the sink where it belongs.” Now, the girls share a bathroom which Frank and I do not use. No one else roams the halls.
“Well I don’t know where the toothpaste is because it is not there.” I have a second set of tooth cleaning items in the kitchen which we often use at night. I have had a basket there since they were babies. Now it is used when I want to check on the thoroughness of the cleanings or those events running out the door before school when we “forgot” to brush upstairs. Last night they brushed at the kitchen sink leaving an even wider gap in the search window.
At breakfast I listened to the girls wonder out loud what could have possibly happened. “I 
think maybe it fell on the floor, and maybe got kicked behind something”. “Maybe the tooth fairy took it when she came for Meg’s tooth the other night”. “Maybe a leprechaun came to the house early and he took it”. I found myself getting involved in the conversation, “when was the last time you saw the toothpaste?”
After getting the girls out the door to school I went up to the bathroom. It seems that the “kicked behind something” theory was a winner.
I guess you never know what’s around the corner. Thankfully, the great toothpaste mystery has been solved.
Decisions for my Family 