Perhaps the best part of Mother's Day was the drive home.

We'd been in Fayetteville, spending the day with my parents.

The kids were in pajamas, exhausted from a late night the evening before. I was at the wheel.

We pulled out of my parents' driveway at 6:35 p.m. By 6:45, everyone — my husband included — was asleep.

For 45 blissful minutes, as the sun streaked the sky pink, I drove in silence. No one talked to me, whined at me, demanded of me.

My mind wandered back a few nights to a book club gathering I'd hosted. We'd dissected mother-daughter relationships that night. One member bestowed what she called a Mother's Day present on each of the women, one word she felt summed up each woman's essence.

My word was "authentic." She was right on target.

"Grateful" was the word she used to sum up another of the women. And that got me thinking. I'm proud to be "authentic" — what you see is what you get with me. No dissembling here. But I could stand to muster up a little more gratitude for everything wonderful in my life.

It's too easy to forget and focus on the picayune details of domestic life, how my husband put the kids' clean laundry away in all the wrong places, how my kids upend the plates of food they're carrying right after I caution them to hold tight with two hands.

The 3:1 ratio (that's 3 kids: 1 mom) can get kind of dicey sometimes. It can be hard to give thanks for bedlam.

So I need to work on my gratefulness quotient, and it's been easier to do since I learned about Ella Newmiller, my son's friend's classmate. Ella turned 5 a few weeks ago in a huge princess blow-out, the same week doctors diagnosed her with an inoperable brain stem tumor.

Ella had been glassy-eyed and sleepy the last week of April. Teachers wondered if she had allergies. Her mother, Renae, speculated she may have taken a tumble and sustained a concussion.

An MRI revealed a much scarier truth.

Within three days of her diagnosis, friends had organized the best 5-year-old birthday bash ever. It was at Edenton Street United Methodist Church, where Ella attends preschool. A horse-drawn carriage carried her around the block. Inside, the incredulous birthday girl perched on a throne. There were crafts and games and cameos by Mr. and Ms. Wuf, N.C. State's mascots. Stormy dropped by on behalf of the Carolina Hurricanes.

I joined a prayer vigil for her. It seemed to be a simple thing to do. Take 30 minutes out of my day, 30 minutes when I'm typically driving the kids to preschool, and think good thoughts about a little girl I don't know.

Word went out via e-mail, and people around the world, in India, in France, in Germany and China, responded that they are praying for her. A rainbow of religions — the more, the better, and they welcome your prayers too.

I have a 5-year-old. I struggle with getting him to pick up his toys, to put his shoes in their cubby and his books on his bookshelf. Ella's parents are struggling with what to tell their daughter about what's happening to her body.

She knows she has something in her brain that needs to come out. She knows her parents are researching every possible way to get it out. What she doesn't know is there aren't a lot of options.

Doctors at UNC-Chapel Hill offer two choices: Radiation or nothing at all. Both alternatives yield the same end result.

You wouldn't think it possible to feel gratitude at a time like this. But then you wouldn't be Renae Newmiller.

Ella's mom is grateful for the avalanche of prayer and goodwill her family has experienced.

People she has never met care intensely about her daughter. That is nothing short of miraculous, and for that, she is thankful.

Sometimes, when you're with your children all the time, it can be hard to feel appreciative.

Sometimes, at the end of an endless day, it's easier to feel resentful. When you're always together, it's natural to take them for granted — their silly syntax and their silly songs, the way they want to be held just as you've scooped up the baby and have grocery bags and lunchboxes and backpacks dangling from your forearm.

It's easy to crave quiet in a day filled with the play-by-play of children — their very vocal aversion to napping and eating their vegetables, their indoor hockey matches waged with broomsticks in the kitchen, their clattering and crying and foot-stomping when the shirt du jour is in the wash.

But in the silence between the moments, in the snatches of quiet, I'll think of Ella and feel grateful for my family's noise.

Ella Newmiller

Bonnie appears every Monday on TriangleMom2Mom.