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The Puzzle

        She knew that true happiness comes from a place inside herself.  The trick she didn't know, was how to create the place and light it up, when she needed to. 

After she remembered incidents from her childhood, like the time they all went camping and her dad put the worm on the hook 'cause she couldn't and she caught that really big fish, and the time she helped her mom bake the cake that fell and they covered it up with chocolate frosting that was higher than the cake, or the time when that boy, the one she liked, came by and asked her out to swing on the swing.   But most of all, she remembered laying in bed, in her PJ's, listening to the old grandfather clock, down in the hall, while waiting for her dad  to come up and read her a story.  Bedtime stories, ...maybe that was part of the answer.  It certainly made her feel loved and happy back then.  She remembered how he'd always start by saying the pet name he had for her and ask her if she was ready for her story. And he'd always wait for her to chime in at the end ... "AND THEY ALL LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER" .

And she remembered how sleep came easily after that, with pleasant dreams, and in the morning, there was a whole new world to experience. Maybe she thought, it's not the world that stays the same, it's how I look at it, each day.

Maybe, she thought, I can unlock the door to that place inside myself that I left, so long ago.       

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