This is my first posting anywhere on tribe, but this question was irresistible. For me too my most beautiful memories revolve around my children. Perhaps the very first moment my daughter's hand touched my fingertip. She was born 2 months premature and only weighed 2.5 lbs. I was encouraged by the medical staff to go to the natal intensive care unit with the doctors tending to her. Looking down at her tiny body, skin just a gossamer thin layering of tissue over bright blue veins, barely human in appearance, is a strange, powerful memory. But the beauty came when the Jamaican nurse said, 'Touch her, Daddy, she wants to know you're here.' I was so afraid to touch such a tiny thing, a bundle of sticks wrapped in onionskin paper, but I placed my fingertip next to one doll-sized hand, and eased it onto her palm. And fingers too small to even grasp the circumference of my fingertip tightened with all the brutal little strength in her body.

In that moment every primal emotion associated with being a parent washed over me. It might be a strange moment to call beautiful, but I guess to me that is precisely what makes it so-the power and uniqueness of the experience. She's about to turn 9 now, and is brilliant, mercurial, and stunningly beautiful, like a little redhaired Natalie Portman.

Apppreciation of beauty is access to the soul, it's causes us to walk and carry ourselves differently. To look into the eyes of someone beholding beauty is to look through the window of the soul.

Whenever soul is present, it's because what your doing, whom you're with, where you are, evokes love without thinking about it. (without ego, without judgement)

But she isn't stupid at all. She's the smartest cat ever. She just likes chasing her tail, and she finally did it after months of healing from her broken leg. That was when I knew she was going to be ok. That is what made that moment special to me... my kitty was playing again. :)