the story of a fairy, a door, and the magic of pretend - part 1

We have a fairy door. We've had it for about 8 years, in a quiet corner of the living room near one of the built in bookcases. It just appeared very coincidentally one day after I read about the urban fairy doors of Ann Arbor. Most people don't even notice it until they've visited a few times.

Miss S first noticed it during a visit a few years ago*. She and her mom had built a fairy garden at home, but she was very intrigued by the idea that we had a resident fairy who lived in our walls instead of our yard. She knocked on the door repeatedly, but no one answered. Where was the fairy? she wanted to know. On a business trip, I told her. She's a career fairy. A Professional Daydreamer, a very important job. Miss S tilted her head and squinted at me, trying to decide if I was yanking her chain.

*(Miss M, interestingly, has only recently asked about the door, even though it's been there since before she was born. I'm sure she noticed it at some point, but she must've just figured that of course a fairy lived at our house, because I am her fairy godmother and therefore, duh.)

When Miss S visited last March, she knocked very politely on the door, but no answer. She tried the doorknocker but still no answer. The fairy, unfortunately, was on vacation at the coast. But since Miss S was herself headed to the coast the next day, maybe she'd see her on the beach! (She had her mom text me from the beach the next day to ask if the fairy liked playing in the water, because she was pretty sure she'd seen the fairy swimming in a tide pool. That might've been her, I agreed. Tide pools make excellent swimming holes for fairies.)

During her visit, I'd bought her an activity tube from SCRAP -- they fill old tennis ball tubes with odds and ends for kids to get creative with, usually with some kind of theme (ex. everything in one color or sports-related bits and pieces; Miss M's was full of blue things) -- and following the creation of a scavenger hunt game within minutes of opening the container, Miss S decided that we should make a dress for the fairy with some of the pieces of fabric from the tube.

So without sewing or needles or scissors or thread, we made a "dress", complete with a belt made from a scrap of ribbon and two little blue "jewels". Other items in the tube soon became part of a gift basket to be left on the fairy's doorstep (a milk jug cap served as the basket), with the hope that the fairy might share the secret of opening the door. She also included a note that the belt went with the dress, just to be sure the fairy knew what to do with it.

On April Fool's Day, I texted a picture of a new package -- an empty dental floss container tied with a pom pom string -- waiting on the fairy's doorstep that I had been instructed to send to Miss S. (I recognized that pom pom string. It had come off a pair of my slipper socks, then disappeared before I could sew it back on. Apparently, the fairy had taken a liking to it....)

ipod shuffle included for comparisonA few days later, a text with pictures. Someone was very excited to receive a special package wrapped in a pom pom string from a slipper sock. Inside were gifts of a very fairy-like nature: a pink feather, a shell from her beach vacation, a pretty button, a ship charm, a shiny bead, and lots and lots of star confetti. And there was a letter from the fairy, introducing herself at last to Miss S -- Periwinkle Mapletree, Resident Fairy at Hall House and Professional Daydreamer -- along with ::gasp:: the key to her front door!

Next up: Part 2, wherein we build, furnish, and decorate a house for a thoroughly modern urban career fairy.