A childhood belief about marriage

When my sister and I were small (younger than 5), in the house where we lived we had one of those giant glass water jars -- you know the ones, that in the 70's people used to put peacock feathers in; it was about 2 feet tall, maybe a foot and a half wide. My mother told us that it used to be her house; that, before she met our father and married him, she'd been a genie, and had lived in that bottle. She told us how it had been decorated, with lamps and silk cushions and so forth; it had evidently been very comfortable. She'd decided to become human so she could get married and have children, but she liked to keep the jar around to remember her old life by.