It's in the Cubby Hole

When my daughter was young, I remember reading a story to her called, "The Bear Under the Stairs.  The story was about a young girl who had this typical childhood fear about a monster bear under her parents stairs.  To appease the bear, she routinely threw banana peels into the dark abyss where the bear resided in order to avoid the bear's evil wrath.  Who didn't have one of these childhood "monsters"?  My siblings and I called the monster in our basement the "boogie man".  However, unlike the scary cave inhabited by the bear under the stairs, the cave under my parents stairs was affectionately called, the cubby hole.

Our cubby hole served as a storage area for card tables and chairs and at times, the vacuum cleaner.  However, when the weather outside turned foul, the cubby hole served as our "tree house".  "Systematically", we removed all the contents of this coveted space, and there, we set up camp for the day and then just let our imaginations run wild.  There are plenty of memories "stored" in that cubby hole for sure.

During the recent holidays, while preparing the family dwelling for the celebration, my sister asked where the extra card chairs were; when I said they were in the cubby hole, she smiled and then laughed as it triggered her own memories of this indoor shelter.  As for me, I prefer to think of our small cubby hole as just a little, childhood wedge of real "escape"!