Where’s that fairy godmother?

Carolyn J. Rose

If you were raised on Disney movies like I was, maybe you know the feeling. You’re cleaning up the kitchen or doing the laundry and you find yourself wishing you could get a little help—not from your husband or kids or roommates, but from some adorable animated mice and birds. You pause, sponge in hand, imagining their cheerful songs or chirps, marveling that they’d know exactly how you want things folded and which dishes go on which shelves.

Then the sponge grows cold, water drips down your arm, and you’re back to reality. Back to scrubbing and sweeping and mopping. Back to washing and drying and putting away. Back to the round of chores necessary to keep things up to standards—whatever those standards may be and whoever may have established them.

If you asked me when I was a child whether I believed forest creatures would help around the house, I would have scoffed at the idea. I knew what make-believe was. I knew those cute little birds and animals were the product of imagination and art and film.

If you asked me that question now, I’d still scoff. But the scoffing would have a dollop of wishing it could be so, and another dollop of wishing I’d never seen those tiny helpers. Knowing they aren’t real makes drudgery more tedious and burdensome.

I think a glass slipper would be uncomfortable. I don’t want to go to a ball. I don’t care if I never meet a prince. But I wouldn’t mind making the acquaintance of a fairy godmother and a few helpful forest creatures.