More Precious than Gold...

...is a thoughtful gift from the heart of your child...

My daughter Lacy left this morning to go back to school at AMDA down in LA. She brought me something at 5:00 this morning before she left with her mother for the airport. A simple, hand woven bracelet. It might not seem like much...but it means the world to me.

Lacy knows that I love it when she makes things for me. The last bracelet she made for me I wore for almost two years before it finally wore out and fell off...I still have it though. As much as that one meant to me, this one means more...so much more.

Lacy was home for the holiday. She had a scant few days to catch up with all of her friends, visit family, spend extra time with her mother, sister, and brother...and help her mother and I make Thanksgiving dinners for dogs for my wife's business. Yet, she somehow still found the time to make the bracelet for me.

I know it was hard. The design that I like is made of alternating arrows to honor my Native American heritage...very intricate. It has 52 arrows, one for each year of my life...the colors are black and white in honor of the story behind my Navajo name...Naaki Tslichi...means TWO DOGS...she had to use a special thread because I have a severe allergy to latex...it almost killed me once...

She'll be nineteen the next time I see her...I still remember holding her up to the window at the top of the stairs in our first house up here in Portland seventeen years ago...the way the amber rays of the street light played across her hair and danced across the magic that the wonder of first snow brought to her eyes...

"It's snowing Daddy...can you believe it?"

It's still snowing for me...all of that wonder, awe and beauty that life sometimes brings when we least expect it...still snowing...because of the love of my wonderful daughter...