GOOCHLAND COUNTY, Va. — Mary Geneva Banks is like many 6-year-olds – she loves soccer, swimming and playing with her "never-ending collection of Barbies."
Her infectious smile and spunky attitude fill playtime with joy.
It's an aura of positivity her parents, Kayla and Philip Banks, say she maintained even during the most difficult days of her life.
"When you see Mary, you would never know that she's been through what she's been through," mother Kayla Banks said. "She was born not breathing."
After three months in the NICU, Mary was able to go home, only to return to the hospital just a few months later.
"You know the articles you see [online], a random [link] you shouldn't click? Well, [Philip] clicked them, and there was one about retinoblastoma that Mary's eye looked like that picture in that article," Kayla said about her husband's discovery.
After several tests, doctors confirmed that 9-month-old Mary had retinoblastoma, a rare eye cancer.
"She was our miracle, and then for that miracle, for her life to be, in a way, jeopardized by cancer, it was just very life changing," Kayla said.
The diagnosis hit the family hard, especially Mary's father.
"What fifth grade is going to be like? I might have to walk her down the aisle one day. Is she going to move away? Go to college? What college you want to go to? Maybe I'll be a granddad? These thoughts are constantly in motion. When you hear the C word, it's like, I might not get that," Philip Banks said.
Over the next few years, the Banks family traveled back and forth to Philadelphia for chemotherapy treatments.
It was a time of worry that they say was thankfully interrupted with a wish.
"Make-A-Wish kind of came in and really took a big burden away from us," Kayla said.
Make-A-Wish, an organization that grants wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditions, contacted the Banks family in the hopes of making Mary's dream of visiting Puerto Rico a reality.
Watch: Minecraft super fan gets wish granted at Microsoft headquarters
"I love going to the pool, and I love going to the beaches," Mary Geneva Banks said.
From the moment they were picked up, put on a plane and arrived in Puerto Rico, fun and food were top of mind.
It's a vacation the Banks said created memories more valuable than gold.
"It felt like family members wanting to support us and wanting to give us a time away that she deserved. I wanted to cry every day, but happy tears," Kayla Banks said.
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