In my own little corner in my own little chair
I can be whatever I want to be.

These words came back to me as I helped clean out the basement of my mother's house. I always felt some kinship to Cinderella in the Rodgers and Hammerstein production from my childhood; not so much about going to the ball, but more about being picked on by siblings and wanting a place to escape, to my own little corner.

There was a small red rocking chair that I put in my secret hideaway beneath the basement stairs. It was my own little corner.

Cinderella would come around on the television about once a year and we would all watch it. The world has changed so much since those days. Now, Fiona watches whatever she wants on her iPhone whenever she wants. Some of the simple magic seems to be gone.

My sister and brother headed out to take another load of stuff out of the house. I stayed behind, lugging boxes of fabric and yarn out of the basement. My mother loved to sew. She would get together with other women from town for sewing circle. That was her peer group, her time to socialize.

As the car became more and more packed with fabric and yarn, I worried about how it would be received. We have too much stuff at our own house. Yet I knew that Fiona would appreciate it.

Perhaps sewing is a trait that can be passed on, skipping a generation. Perhaps, though I never developed a love of sewing or needle craft myself, I am a carrier, and Fiona has inherited some of it through me, from her grandmother.

By the time I came back from my next trip to my mother's house, Fiona already had one project nearing completion and was dreaming of others.

Me? I now sit in a much larger chair, in a different corner of a different house.

On the wings of my fancy I can fly anywhere
and the world will open its arms to me.

Now, I try to record my flights of fancy in stories I tell online.

All alone in my own little chair.