One day, a bright blue box tied with a sparkly bow shows up on the door step, with a note attached to the bow, which simply reads “Special delivery, for Amelia only.” Mommy gives the box to Amelia to open all on her own!
Amelia carefully unties the ribbon, and gently opens the top of the box. Inside, there are – some beautiful, clear as glass, slippers! She s-l-i-p-s them on her feet (because they’re slippers, of course!), and they feel like cozy little socks! These slippers are flexy, bendy, comfy — perfect for running and dancing and jumping!
Amelia wears the magic slippers, her heart feeling light and full of love, and everywhere the slippers touch. everything becomes more lovely. The grass she steps on turns a more brilliant green, moist, with that just-got-trimmed smell cut grass has filling the air. The soil below feels like loving hands supporting her every step. The trees, with roots deep beneath the ground she walks on, now flush with bright full leaves and a new vigor in their trunks and branches. They’re swaying and stretching as if waking up, like princes and princesses long asleep and dreaming of themselves as old and broken, now awakening to the prime of their youth. They’re growing straight and tall, stretching out their limbs and shaking their now gloriously full branches.
How wondrous and delightful the world appears – in love with Amelia and Amelia in love with the world.
One day, Amelia, is playing and twirling in her slippers. Her feet get tangled and, PLOP! down she goes. Ouch! She skins her knee – that hurts! She’s angry, mad at the pain she feels from the boo-boo on her knee, mad at the tree root she blames for tripping her (it really didn’t trip her, in fact it hadn’t moved a bit!), mad at the slippers. “Stupid shoes!” she yells, and starts stomping around.
Well, the magic slippers are so sad, they turn as cloudy and dark as her mood! Believe me, stomping around with dark and cloudy magic slippers is not something you want to do! Amelia stomps, storms, stews, and the beautiful tree princes and princesses begin to fall back into their nightmares of withering away. The earth turns hard as rock, (even tripping her up on purpose and making her skin her knee again!), the grass, shrivels and crackles and snaps, everything drying up and broken.
Well, this is not delightful, Amelia is thinking – I don’t like magic slippers that make the world ugly and fearful! Right then, a beautiful blue butterfly swoops and dances right in front of her nose – it’s so close, it tickles! She laughs and giggles, and…wait, listen. There, she can just now barely hear the wind in the trees. It’s like a beautiful song, now louder and now a little louder, and the birds take up the song, and the squirrels chip, chip, chipper along – a lovely chorus, playing just for her!
Amelia smiles, “I get it!” she says quietly, to no one else there. “It’s my feelings – the magic slippers send my feelings out, so I can see them and see what they do! And just like the butterfly made me laugh when I fell down and was mad, I can always change my mind about how I feel. I can let angry and mad just float away like the clouds on a windy day!
And Amelia’s joy in her magic slippers grows and grows. ‘It’s thrilling,’ she’s decided. ‘I can choose how I feel! I can choose to feel good, I can choose to feel happy, I like feeling loved!’ She skips and …trips – oh, no! But this time, the anger comes and flashes right through her…she lets it float right by, like a cloud in the sky.