Dream: Re-Entry

When you spend five days in the happiest place on earth, it can be tough to return to any of the other places on earth. 

During past visits to Disney World we rented a car and stayed off the property, allowing my cynical nature some breathing room amidst all of the unrelenting good cheer.  This time around, my mother-in-law organized the trip and went the total immersion route: we stayed at a Disney hotel where at least half of the television channels were Disney-affiliated, took Disney transportation to Disney parks everyday, and ate all of our meals at Disney restaurants. 

The full Disneyfication of our vacation caused me some pre-trip anxiety.  I packed for a four-night stay as if I were preparing for a month long exile on a desert island, wedging wet wipes, chewing gum, peanut butter crackers and clean underwear into every spare inch of suitcase.  I wasn't entirely wrong to worry about surviving my Disney internment. Among other hazards, I faced incredibly long lines, an infestation love bugs --black flying bugs attached in coital, and a whole lot of togetherness with the in-laws.

But now that I'm back, I find myself struggling a bit more than anticipated with the re-entry.

Back at Disney we basked in days of uninterrupted sun and moved against a landscape of towering palms and lush mouse-themed topiaries.  Here in reality the blooming forsythia bushes do little to brighten the cold gray sky and salt-scarred lawn.

Back at Disney it seemed perfectly reasonable to make a meal of ice cream, while reality requires vegetables, and thus a whole lot more shopping, peeling, chopping, cajoling, insisting and sulking than a dish of soft serve.

In Disney World the vast range of body shapes and sizes --many on display in lycra spandex-- had me feeling pretty good about myself.  Here in reality, we have a scale.  And quantitative evidence to suggest that ice cream is not such a reasonable meal choice.

Back at Disney there were cheerful white-uniformed groundspeople to sweep up trash just as quickly as it could touch the ground and everyone smiled and called me princess.  Here in reality, Big E's friend hops into my back seat on the way to yesterday's Daisy Scouts meeting, looks around, cocks her head and announces, "My mom and dad like to vacuum their cars."

At Disney, I felt confident that there would be in our immediate vicinity at all times both one child and one adult behaving worse than all of the children and parents in our group.  And if the occasion were to arise that we had the worst behaved children in the immediate vicinity we could simply plunk them in our massive plastic rental stroller, part wheel barrow, part battering ram, and seek the solace of screeching children elsewhere.

Here in reality, when Little E flies into a clamorous rage while at the library to pick Big E up from her Daisy meeting, there is no possibility of retreat.  And when I smile apologetically at the sneering parents around me and offer, "We just got back from Disney World, so. . .", it sounds even more ridiculous out loud than it did in my head.

Back at Disney, they are building a new Fantasyland.  Here in reality, that sounds like exactly what I need.

Play: The slippery slope from intention to reality

Even before I had children, I was an expert in child rearing.  No, especially before I had children, I was an expert in child rearing. Okay, okay.  Only before I had children was I an expert in child rearing.

Back in my mid-twenties, I had such plans for my hypothetical children.  They would wear gender neutral clothing and scorn television for playing happily with decor-friendly wooden toys.  Their interests would include sitting quietly in restaurants and waiting rooms, as well as eating whatever I served them.

There were a few things for which I, as a pretend mother, would simply not stand.  My children would never kick the back of airplane seat.  Not once.  Also, they wouldn't require portable DVD players because on long trips they would be content to play "I-Spy", or just gaze at the scenery, or --worst case scenario-- bliss out on Dramamine.  Also, we would never, ever become one of those Disney families that heads to the Magic Kingdom every vacation.  My hypothetical children and I would enjoy authentic experiences, and they would understand that there was more to life than their personal entertainment.

Right.

Ten years later, I have two actual flesh and blood children, who do on occasion speak above a whisper in public.  I also have a house full of sparkly pink tutus and a playroom full of plastic.  I know where to find an episode of Spongebob at any hour of the day and I've been known to hop up from the dinner table to make a pb&j (or to demand that my husband jump up and do it).  And we've been to Walt Disney World, um, a few times.

The first time seemed innocent enough. I mean every little girl does to Disney World at least once in her life, right?  Who knew it was a gateway to a much darker habit?

After my parents heard what a great time the girls had the first time, they sprang for a Disney trip for the whole family the following summer.

Fearful of turning into one of those families, my husband and I vowed that we would not return to Walt Disney World the following summer.  We booked a trip to Southern California and then, discovering a loophole in our oath, decided to spend our a couple of days, including our tenth anniversary, at Disneyland.

Incidentally, spending your milestone anniversary at a sweaty theme park with two tired kids is not as enchanting as it sounds.  However, the couple in front of us on the line for the Tomorrowland Speedway thought it was the height of romance. They were thirteen.

And tomorrow we will pack up our portable DVD players and board a plane to Orlando. Try as I might, it's likely that seatbacks will be kicked (apparently a hazard of child-sized legs).  This time the trip is a Christmas gift from my in-laws, and, I swear, the last visit for a very, very long while.

This summer we will, instead, head out on a road trip in search of that authentic experience my hypothetical children so appreciated.  Also, we will surprise the girls with a couple of nights in Orlando at the Nickelodeon Hotel, Little E's lifelong dream.  Please don't judge as harshly as 25-year-old me would.

Play: A day in Girl World

I don't have a lifelong friend --the kind who's known me since the sandbox, who would have been the only choice to be my maid of honor-- but I want that for my girls. I blame my own lack of this friend on school transfers, long-distance moves and the passage of time.  But I'll be damned if these things will come in between Big E and her first friend, M.

Though they live in different towns and go to different schools I have made it my mission to ensure that M really is Big E's BF-F.  I make sure that they get together every month or so and with that in mind, I took Big E, Little E and M to the mall to see Tangled this weekend.

Big E and M first met in the toddler room at their daycare when Big E was not even two and M was six months older.  That half a year put M a grade ahead in school and a notch higher in sophistication; with each get together that last part seems a little more apparent.  This time I noticed it as soon as I picked her up, when her entire conversation with Big E was whispered behind a concealing hand and punctuated with giggles. 

And quickly I realized that the open, ingenuous days of pre-school and kindergarten were gone.  M and Big E are headed to Girl World.

This became even more clear as we walked through the mall to the theater and M noted that she "loved, loved" the tank top in the window at Old Navy, Big E, whose wardrobe preference is whatever I lay out for her (with special enthusiasm for shirts with cute dogs on them)  nodded in solemn agreement.  With time to kill before the movie I agreed to take them into the oddly-named Justice for Girls, a tweeny-bopper chain M had deemed "so perfect."  The two of them pawed earnestly through the racks and discussed the relative merits of glitter and sequins but gave me a little hope when they blushed and giggled at the racks of festively patterned training bras.

They are hovering at the threshold, singing along expertly to the Jonas Brothers in the car but unself-consciously holding hands all through the mall.  M, the second-grader, is a farther gone than first-grader Big E.  She wears Ugg boots to Big E's OshKosh snow boots and dishes out plentiful advice of varying value.  To Little E: "Never start smoking.  It's a terrible habit."  (So true!)  To Big E:  "You should always hang all your hair over your shoulder and tilt your head like this." (Impractical and not terribly becoming...)  Little E, I fear, is not as far behind as I would hope; recently she gravely announced that she would be giving up red as her favorite color, as it was time for her to like pink.

It is not just that it is bittersweet to watch Big E growing up, it is that I remember my own years in Girl World and I worry.  I'm hoping that the extensive character education curriculum at her school will spare her some of the girl-on-girl nastiness that was business as usual in my elementary school. Just last week she chatted about empathy with a level of understanding that I think I only developed myself in the last few years. I feel cautiously optimisitic on this front, but even if the girls manage to play nice, there's still all the rest. 

There are  movies like Tangled, which, while enteraining, sent some dubious messages.  For example, when the woman who says she's your mother tells you she knows what's best for you, you may find that she's simply an evil old lady who stole you from your real mother, a sweet, beautiful, eternally-young queen.  Or, when you meet a roguish bad boy, you will effortlessly charm him and with love and understanding reveal his heart of gold and, naturally, live happily ever after.  Neither outcome is very likely in my experience. Oh, and there's long blond hair is magical and when it is not, it turns brown.  (Note to Big E:  Your long blond hair will turn brown, and hopefully you'll manage more gracefully than I did when it happened to me.)

Of course nothing in Tangled even compares to the trailer we watched for the upcoming Disney teen movie Prom, which proclaims that prom night is "about who you are" and "who you are going to be."  Thank God this movie didn't exist when I attended my own prom, which would have spoken very unflattering about who I was and augered terribly about who I was to become.

At the end of the day, after the girls had insisted that we stop to watch enviously as girls not much older than they flirted with the camera and swayed to bad techno at a "Model and Talent Search" in the food court, we headed to back to the car.  There I struggled mightily to wedge the three of them in the back seat with a car seat and two boosters.  And though M happily chirped that she hadn't used a booster in years, I continued to mutter G-rated curses under my breath and search for the seatbelt socket.

I had a government-approved product that promised to protect these girls.  I have a feeling that it won't be that simple in the years to come, and I wasn't about to give it up that easily.