nothing

I don't feel that I've lived a particularly sheltered life. I've wandered a bazaar in Istanbul, slept beneath the stars in the fabulously cosmic Oak Creek Canyon in Arizona, lived on my own for a summer in the West Indies...but there is nothing, nothing, nothing that makes me feel more grateful to be alive than this:Aven has been fighting off (yet another)winter cold, and the cough in her chest sounds way too big for her small body. Soothing her to sleep on my shoulder and feeling her body relax against me is what makes me willing to walk the house with her, swaying and singing for as long as she needs me to.