The Happiest Place on Earth

It's always bugged me to hear Disney's Magic Kingdom called "The Happiest Place on Earth" - as if happiness were something that could be conjured up with roller coasters and costumed characters. But when my mom and dad offered to organize a family trip to Orlando, I couldn't say no.

My daughter's 13 and lives in Montreal. My parents are well into their retirement way out on the West Coast, where my sister and her boyfriend also live. Time is fleeting and the future always uncertain, so any opportunity to get together is rare, and precious.

By some unspoken agreement we all treated this trip that way, and spent two weeks together in our own shared experience of what passes for paradise here on the planet.

We're not the perfect family - we squabble and irritate one another as much as any group of wildly different characters - but we are a family that values family, and knows enough by now to be grateful for our unbelievable blessings.

The latest blessing was this trip, a journey some of us had made once before,  in part, when my sister and I were little. We went back through some old memories and made a whole lot of new ones, drinking in every last drop of an experience we knew we'd likely never repeat.

We took a cruise. We swam with dolphins. We stuffed ourselves with seafood. We rode on rides and bought souvenirs and ate giant scoops of ice cream and all of that tourist stuff. I felt guilty for the indulgence, but that's my problem. All of that is a means to an end, and the end was simply being together.

So this is a picture of the gang of us in the Happiest Place on Earth. It happens to be Walt Disney World, but I hope and pray it could be anywhere, any place where we're together and grateful.

May every family find that place together. It's a magic kingdom indeed.