In my early childhood, when I was three and four, I made two long-term stays at my grandmother’s house in the countryside away from my family. Unlike my family’s tiny apartment, her house was huge and spacious, providing a plenty of space for me to explore and get lost in my imagination.
One of my favourite spots to explore was the family’s bathroom. Though it was not a big space, there was an interesting cabinet that I loved to observe in detail. It was attached to the wall right next to the toilet seating, and whenever I sat down for business, I would look at the cabinet door.
The wooden cabinet door had a vertical pattern which resembled a staircase. When I opened the door, toilet rolls and cleaning items came into my sight. Among them was a bottle of cleaning liquid, whose shape was thin near the top and wide at the bottom. As I gazed at the bottle, slowly, an elegant princess would appear in front of me – the round cap was her face, the bottle’s body was her dress, spreading gorgeously like a flower.
The cabinet was her palace. It had many stories and rooms, and some of them were occupied by her attendants and servants.
“Where is the prince?”
As I wondered, somebody called the princess from outside the palace. It was the prince! The princess hurriedly came out of the building, running down the staircase to meet the prince…
I bounced the bottle of cleaning liquid down the vertical pattern on the cabinet door. The story always ended there. Sometimes, she would go out with the prince, and other times, she invited him inside the palace. But I never knew what they might have done after that since that was when I would stand up and leave the bathroom.
As I put the bottle back in the cabinet, I felt so happy and proud that I had discovered the princess and her secret palace, which would always wait there for me until my next visit.