The Day I Ordered A Fairy Door

When my daughter turned four, I asked for birthday gift ideas. One was for a fairy door. A miniature door attached to the wall, where imaginary fairies emerge from. Given she is a huge fan of fairies in general, I went with this idea. Instead of ordering a $35 door marketed as a fairy door, I thought I would order a dolls house internal door (a hack I read about on the internet). I found a dolls house store on eBay and ordered a white wicker outdoor chair, a door knob, and some adorable accessories like a tiny broomstick, but yep, you guessed it, I forgot to order The Actual Door.

That was nine months ago.

Since then, “Order door” has been on my to-do list, but it has consistently made it to the bottom of the list below “Pay car insurance bill” and “Fill out kindy forms”. In other words, it became non-important, non-urgent. Time and time again that door order was bumped right to the bottom while I swashbuckled my way through a year of being a full-time PhD student, GP and mama. I wrote papers. I organised workshops. I took my kids to the dentist, allergist, and cardiologist. I analysed data. I did Christmas. And that fairy door was faithfully transferred from one list to the next, never quite making it up there. Until today.

Last night I awoke suddenly to a realisation. My daughter is going to be five soon. Before I know it, she will be six. Then seven. Then a teenager. Slowly, and yet not slowly enough, she is changing. She says Sesame Street is boring. She only wants to play with her friends (not me). She spends a lot of time alone in her room playing by herself. Life isn’t going to stop for us – the dentist appointments (sadly) will continue, the bills will keep coming in, my career will continue to burgeon and demand my attention. I will have school lunches to pack, recitals to attend, pap smears to get done (yay!)

One day I might wake up and it might be too late for that fairy door. That tiny piece of wood with six panels will only be that to her – a piece of wood. Not a magical doorway into fairyland and her imagination. That poor neglected door might finally arrive, if I ever get down to the bottom of my to-do list (it’s like the laundry – virtually impossible to clear) and she might not care a hoot for it. Non-important and non-urgent. But today, it went to the top of my list. Important and Urgent.

Urgent because time is passing as I busy myself with the tasks of raising a family and building a career, as we see birthdays, Christmas and Easter come and go each year like the ebb and flow of an unceasing tide. Tree goes up, tree goes down. Presents are wrapped and unwrapped. Each year marking a little bit more of a loss of this precious time, when imagination is at its peak, when my little girl starts every sentence with “Pretend I am…”

When will she stop pretending? When will she no longer believe in fairies and unicorns? I don’t know. But I don’t want to be too late.

So today, after taking a pause in the middle of writing yet another paper, I ordered the fairy door. And two tiny cat bowls (fairies have cats, don’t they?) A miniature pink mail-box, where she can put a tiny note to the fairies in. And a side table to go with that white wicker chair. (I almost ordered a set of four little celebration cakes and a miniature flower pot but I sensibly stopped myself).

Any day now, that door will arrive in the mail. We’ll paint it and put it up on the wall together with the fairy’s chair and table. And she’ll wait each morning to see what the fairy has done overnight. Eventually she’ll get bored of it and it will be forgotten. But not before I’ve had the chance to enjoy, to fully embrace, the marvel of childhood. The simplicity, the innocence, the beauty of this short time, before the fairy doors and unicorns and dolls and teddies are given away and packed in boxes and my children emerge into independent adults who no longer believe that fairies exist.

So much of child-rearing is important but not urgent. Today I learned that much of it is more urgent than we think. Over in a heartbeat, they say. During the long difficult baby and toddler months and years, this seems ludicrous, but the older my children get, the more I am appreciating it.

Important, and Urgent.