Circle of Life

 My daughter turned five years old today; watching her bound around my house with a smile on her face, wrapped up in her unicorn dress and playing with the many new unicorn stuffies she got for her birthday brings me absolute, unbridled joy.  It's just amazing to me how the time has passed - five years was a blink of the eye for me but it's been her entire life.  It just makes me remember when I was five - we lived in a little house in a different time.  A small little neighborhood enclave, but it seemed like a huge world to me.  Really, it was just two streets tucked off the main street in a little town in Central New York.  But my friends lived just down the road, and we played in the streets - the world seemed so large and unexplored to me.  I remember the sense of wonder just one trip down the street provided. I see the same glee and depth in my daughters eyes and it just makes me happy to be alive.  I've survived a lot just to be able to have these moments with her, and that is a miracle.