In the Land of Happily Ever After there lived a girl named Allis Good, who had every thing she could ever want. She didn’t want, of course, a brother, so it didn’t matter a bit that her parents had never given her one, and the sister she had was the perfect combination of congenial companion and willing victim when the always innocent Allis wished to play Queen. Her dream was to be the best at everything she tried to do, and in truth she was successful at this, though no one realized that she never tried anything she might not be great at in the first place.
Allis’s father, who was by all accounts the perfect father, thought Allis might become a painter or a musician, so he signed her up with the best painting and music teachers in Happily. Both of these teachers said Allis was talented and gave her father glowing reports of her promise, but while the music teacher set about teaching her scales and chords, plus easy pieces to play on the piano, the painting teacher just gave her a book and a bust to draw from, and told her to draw and draw and draw every day. He was convinced of her talent, but he didn’t show her a way to find success. He told her it was almost impossible to become a true artist, and that the most she could hope for was to work hard and maybe be an illustrator or a painter. The true “artist” was someone, he implied, that was gifted from the beginning, and Allis could see that she had already been designated a lesser talent by this great teacher.
After a time the clouds began to form over Happily and Allis’s life began to take a turn for the worse. She left the piano and the paintbrush behind and followed the more common path to the land of Marriage and Children. While she was happy at first in her new home, the environment in MAC was not at all what she’d been used to in HEA, and she began to suspect things were not all she’d been promised. Despite all her best efforts, her worst fears proved true, and the land of MAC turned out to be a mirage. Abandoned and burdened with sadness, she wondered how she would ever get back to Happy. She didn’t even know where she was anymore, but she began to look for clues to find her way home.
One day she received a letter from her old music teacher, who invited her to return to Happy where she was needed. Things had changed a lot in Happily Ever After, so much so that many people wouldn’t even know Allis Good, but some remembered her, and she found enough old friends who had known her in her happier days that she decided to return for good. She sold all her possessions, except the ones her parents had left her, and returned to Happily Ever After, although her children had already gone to live with Daddy Big Bucks and wouldn’t consider coming with her.
The painting teacher had died years before, but one day Allis ran into another student of his, and puzzled, she asked him how he’d managed to become a successful artist with such a formidable teacher. She learned for the first time that her painting teacher had not fully shared the secrets of success with her and that it was possible to be a successful painter without all the years of hopeless agony and work. Stunned, she thought about this for a long time and decided to take the first painting class she could find, even if the teacher wasn’t the greatest teacher in town.
What a surprise it was to find out that success in painting comes in little steps, and that all that is required is that she try each day to put something down on paper. She learned that each step builds on itself, something she had overlooked in the earlier lessons of the master. The elusive genius was there inside her all along.
Allis began to paint and she found that all the other things in her life began to improve once she was back in Happily, so she didn’t miss her life at MAC at all.
But don’t go looking for Allis in Happily, because Allis doesn’t live there anymore. The town changed its name to Ends Well. And Allis has a new name also, as she changed her last name from Good to Wealth. So her new address will be:
Allis Wealth at Ends Well
|
|
Copyright 2004 Susan W. Hales
Theme Design by Bryan Bell
