Christmas Present

My first Christmas card has arrived: E and V with a Happy Holidays wish. Life is grand for five-year-old and three-year-old girls, whose genuine smiles and loving hearts and sisterhood shine in the photograph.
I look at them and see their father and his sister when they were children, and in them I see their Pops, my brother, and in him I see my father.

The Lion King animals celebrate the circle of life, and I suppose I do, too, though it's strange now to be a member of the oldest generation. Not frightening exactly, but discomfiting at the least.

Looking at these faces, I envy the living-in-the-minute experience of these two girls, one of whom wrote that "God is all the people who love me." I'm one of them, and that makes me part of God. E's is truly an awesome Christmas gift.