Bubbie's Band

            by Maggie Bond

 

            In a crickety cottage in a brambly wood lived a Fairy Godmother named Bubbie. Bubbie was frequently away from home helping out her godchildren, bestowing gifts on newborn babes, and generally keeping everyone out of trouble.

            When Bubbie would get home after a busy day making dreams come true, she didn’t know what to do with herself. She would mess about in her tiny kitchen making tea and scones, but then have no one to share them with.   

            She would dance about to her vast collection of records, doing the shopping cart, the microwave, and the trapezoid dance, but had to no one to waltz with.

            She’d play her magnificent accordion, but had no one to accompany her.

            Bubbie sat alone with her tea and her records and her accordion thinking. She was not the only Fairy Godparent; maybe she was not the only one who could use a friend. “But how does one make friends?” She wondered.

            One day Bubbie was slumped in her favorite armchair, Iggy Pop playing emptily on the gramophone, when she got it in her head to go up to her attic and tidy up a bit. Bubbie poked her head up the trap door slowly, wand at the ready. No monsters seemed to have taken up the attic as their new residence, so she soon got down to dusting, and sorting, and discovering.

 

            Bubbie’s attic was filled with colorful masks from around the world, macaroni necklaces and paintings from many of her godchildren, and a moose head or two. She found things she forgot were up there too: a bunch of expired potions, a very small submarine, a grandfather clock, and instruments. There was a grand piano, some maracas, a nose flute (that is actually played with ones nose), a didgeridoo, a ukulele, a panpipe, and a xylophone in various states of slight disrepair.

            The wheels in Bubbie’s head began to turn. Never liking anything to go to waste, not even a couple of mice or a pumpkin, and lonely as she was, the idea of forming a band popped into her head. A band!!

            Bubbie took an ad out in the fairy godparent’s union newsletter. Normally she wasn’t that involved in the union, being shy and not prone to political rants. Soon calls from other fairy godparents came pouring in. This one played the tuba, that one could play the didgeridoo if she happened to have one around, and another could play nothing but the kazoo, and just thought joining a band would be “awesome”.          

            “Lovely!!” Bubbie replied to them all, “Tea time on Wednesday work for you?”

 

            In the end fifteen fairy godparents showed up ready to play in Bubby’s band, a motley crew of bassoon and banjo players, trombones and bases. They jammed into her small living room and busted through “The Only Living Boy in New York”.

 

            They sounded terrible. But a fairy godparent knows that it takes more then magic to work together and play music, so they kept practicing and started having so much fun and getting pretty good. Soon, anytime that Bubbie was home godparents would be knocking at her door. They wanted to practice a new song or drink tea or listen to records. Bubby loved taking care of her godchildren, and she loved playing with her new friends.