Impossible! said the song in my head as I woke and hit the snooze button.

For a plain yellow pumpkin
To become a golden carriage

It was a message from my fairy godmother. Indeed, it did feel impossible to get out of bed right then. I stayed up too late watching TV again, and starting another day was unthinkable. My godmother curates my lifelong collection of songs from a corner of my brain. As I dreamily focused on the music echoing through my sleepy brain, she sent memories of other songs to the surface.

In my own little corner
In my own little chair
I can be whoever I want to be

I heard these songs for the first time on TV nearly 50 years ago, sung by Lesley Anne Warren in the CBS Cinderella musical special. Songs by Rodgers and Hammerstein were well-known and loved in the late 60s, but to me as a little kid in the early 70s, sprawled in the TV room with my sisters and brother, they were the freshest thing I’d ever heard. And I felt like they spoke directly to me.

Music transforms the ordinary into the wondrous. As a kid, I spent my days tuned in to AM radio, lapping up Jim Croce, Stevie Wonder, Seals and Crofts, Leo Sayer, and so many one-hit wonders. My godmother was listening, and she filed away these lifelong companions, sending them out to say hi every now and then.

I feel the world through the songs I know. I think of the next thing to say based on the last thing I listened to. When I hear a new song and love it, part of me changes inside.

When I get out my tenor sax and learn to play songs like this one, I’ve turned a normal hour into magic:

And finally I'm glad I got out of bed.