She looks at me and laughs with her entire face - eyes wide, mouth open, cheeks pointed. She turned two years old last week and today we sit on the balcony and blow bubbles. Her parents' house overlooks Charleston's harbor and the mid-morning sky is bright against its horizon. We take advantage of the sunny day by opening the doors of the house to play with soap and wands on porches, and as the sun beats on my lower neck, as she crouches to dip her wand, as a white car drives by, I smile. I breathe through my nose.

"La!" she cries to get my attention.

"La-a!"

I look. She is blowing bubbles over the edge and laughing hysterically again. I ask for the wand. I dip it into the mixture and blow a few bubbles. The breeze is greedy with them and we both watch as it proceeds to disperse them from one another. The translucent spheres lazily drift to another brick building, to the top of a "No Parking" sign, to a tree. But there is one bubble that goes higher, and then higher still. It is with this bubble that I become intrigued. I ask myself if the altitude will pop it, wonder if it will encounter a bug. But neither happen and the bubble continues to dance on the wave of a breeze as it capers to the ocean. The sun is high in the sky and my eyes begin to burn as I try to watch the bubble. It rises higher still into the blue sky so much so that eventually I cannot make out its shape but instead, I only see two bright spots where the sunlight most catches the bubble's surface.

"La!" She is trying to get my attention. For a moment I break my gaze and stop to help her. When I look up, the bubble has disappeared. I search the sky momentarily, knowing that it is fruitless. And although I cannot find the bubble, I'd like to think that it did make its way all the way to the waterway, carried by its breeze. I'd like to think I am as light and as free, but then I remind myself that while my body may not allow for that lightness, my spirit is certainly just as free. In this thought, I am content and I lean against the outside wall of the house and breathe.