Sometimes it feels as if I am always writing a new ending or two for the best hen that I ever knew. Looking back, I had wished so much for a different ending.

People are constantly imagining stories. It is just a natural activity that is not consciously practiced. Even though I consider myself to be a writer, I’ve noticed this about myself.

If I see an old abandoned house out in the country, my mind begins flashing through pictures of the people who might have lived there. There would have been biscuits baking in the oven and animal noises in the backyard. That is mentally moving back in time, but even then, I am imagining traveling forward in time to the tragic events that might have caused the home and its farm to be abandoned.

That is how it works for me in my own life, and you can compare with your own experiences. More personally, something new comes along and almost immediately my mind works at moving into the future and imagining how it will change my life. My mind will work overtime writing a new ending that leaves me living “happily ever after.”

Although some will likely disagree, I take this as a sign that we are all born being optimists. We all want a happy ending. It is what any heart desires.

When imagining that someone offers to give me a rooster for my little all-hen flock, my mind moves immediately forward to one of my hens laying eggs that will hatch into beautiful baby chicks. And again forward to those chicks laying eggs that hatch into more baby chicks.

That was what I had hoped for my Gracie. She would have been such a good Chicken Momma. My backyard would assuredly never be without those who had inherited her special feathers and—even more—her special heart.

That would have been the new ending I would have written for her. It is a new ending that feels increasingly real as I sink down into the happiness of it all.

Just as drawing (and writing) lets you do things you can never do any other way, drawing (and writing) also lets you have the happy ending you can never have any other way.